How sweet
it smelled, and how mellow and juicy it was! Gerald could think of
nothing so good to do with such a beautiful ripe apple as to eat it.
He put it to his mouth and took a great bite of it, then another bite,
and another. Soon there was nothing left of the apple but the core,
which Gerald threw away. He smacked his lips and went on his way, but
the wind in the apple trees sang, sorrowfully, after him:
"Here in the orchard are apples two,
But gone is the treasure that fell for you."
And after a while Hilda came down the lane that passed by the orchard
wall. She looked up at the two beautiful gold apples that hung on the
branch of the old apple tree, and she listened to the wind as it sang
in the branches to her:
"Here in the orchard are apples two,
A treasure they hold for a child like you."
Then the wind blew harder and, _plump_, an apple fell in the lane
right in front of Hilda.
She picked it up joyfully. She had never seen so large and so golden
an apple. She held it carefully in her clasped hands and thought what
a pity it would be to eat it, because then it would be gone.
"I will keep this gold apple always," Hilda said, and she wrapped it
up in the clean handkerchief that was in her pocket. Then Hilda went
home, and there she laid away in a drawer the gold apple that the old
apple tree had given her, closing the drawer tightly.
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