"May be she does. She isn't sure that you feel up to them, always. But I guess she means them to come round, when she tells them to me. You see they had just been gathering their apples, in that great lower orchard,--five acres of trees, and such a splendid crop! There they were, all piled up,--can't you imagine? A perfect picture! Red heaps, and yellow heaps; and greenings, and purple pearmains, and streaked seek-no-furthers. Like great piles of autumn leaves! Well, the flood came, and rose up over the flats, into the lower end of the orchard. They went down over night, and moved all the piles further up, The next day, they had to move them again. And the next morning after that, when they woke up, the whole orchard was under water, and every apple gone. Mr. Jeffords said he got down just in time to see the last one swim round the corner. And when the flood had fallen,--there, half a mile below, spread out over the meadow, was three hundred barrels of apple sauce!" Mrs. Argenter laughed a feeble little _expected_ laugh; her heart was not free to be amused with an apple-story. No wonder Mrs. Jeffords kept the funny parts for Sylvie. Mrs. Argenter quenched her before she could possibly get to them. But was Sylvie's heart free for amusement? What was the difference? The years between them? Mrs. Jeffords was a far older woman than Mrs. Argenter, and had had her cares and troubles; yet she and Sylvie laughed like two girls together, over their work and their stories. That was it,--the work! Sylvie was doing _all she could_. The cheerfulness of doing followed irresistibly after, into the loops and intervals of time, and kept out the fear and the repining. "There was nothing that chippered you up so, as being real driving busy," Mrs. Jeffords said. Mrs. Argenter sat in her low easy-chair, watched away the time, and worried about the time to come. It left no leisure for a laugh. Perhaps the hardest thing that Sylvie did through the day, was the setting to work to "chipper" her mother up. It was lifting up a weight that continually dropped back again. "Do they think this rain will ever be over?" asked Mrs. Argenter, turning her face toward the dripping panes again. "Why, yes, mother; rains always _have_ been over sometime. They never knew one that wasn't, and they go by experience." There was nothing more to be said upon the rain topic, after that simple piece of logic. "If there doesn't come Badgett up the hill in all the pour!" Badgett drove the daily stage from Tillington up through Pemunk and Sandon. He came round by Brickfields when there was anybody to bring. Badgett drove up over the turf door-yard, close to the porch. He jumped off, unbuttoned the dripping canvas door, and flung it up.