After dinner, she discussed with Lady Jane what she meant to buy and where the best price might be found. DeVigne and Sir Harold had a game table drawn up to the other side of the grate and had a game of chess. At eleven o’clock, Lady Jane began yawning, and it was the signal for the company to take its leave. She and Harold walked to the Dower House through the garden that separated the two buildings. It was not a long enough distance to require having their carriage put to. DeVigne was to see Delsie home. With a pleasant glow still lingering from the evening, she was surprised when his first question after they were ensconced in the carriage was, “I expect you find the time at the Cottage lonesome, with only Bobbie for company?”

“Oh, no! I was very busy all day with my bookkeeping, you recall, and getting settled in.”

“You will soon make new friends, to call on you and to visit in turn. It is the mourning that keeps our circle so close at this time.”

She had not the least desire to see the cozy circle enlarged by so much as one. “I suppose so,” she answered.

“For the present, you must feel free to visit Aunt Jane if you are lonesome, or bring Bobbie to me, as I mentioned. I am home a good deal in this weather.”

“I won’t be lonesome,” she said, and smiled softly to herself. How wonderful to have whole days to herself, with no school. It was like a long, perpetual holiday. “Oh, but I didn’t mean to be unsociable. I shall take Bobbie to Lady Jane, of course.”

“Also to her Uncle Max, I hope. I mentioned two homes where you will always be welcome, cousin.”

Twice he had mentioned it. She hardly knew what to say to so much condescension, and said, “Thank you.”

“I did not mean to give the impression I was bestowing a favor. Quite the contrary. I am sometimes lonesome too.”

It was a novel thought to ponder, that deVigne, with his mansion and his carriages and his arrogant face, should ever be lonesome, but perhaps he was. Still, she could not quite envision herself walking boldly to his front door and asking for him.

When they reached the Cottage, the house was in utter darkness, looking strangely ominous, with the untrimmed shrubbery reaching black arms into the path, and with the building itself a black hulk, lightened by the irregular paler shapes of the plaster in the half-timbering. She was reluctant to enter; “I should have told them to leave some lights burning,” she said. More inexperience on her part.

“It should not have been necessary. Any sane servant should have known enough. You’ll have a job on your hands reforming the Bristcombes, it seems. At least they have not locked you out. The door is on the latch.”

They entered into a perfectly black hallway, where deVigne fumbled at the table to light a lamp. Of the Bristcombes not a sign was to be seen. “I wonder if he locked up before going to bed,” Max said. A check of the side door in the study revealed it was locked, and they assumed the kitchen quarters to be safe as well. Delsie locked the front door after him and took the lamp up the stairs to light her way. Even with her lamp, she found it rather frightening to be going alone down the black hallway, in a strange house. She peeped into Bobbie’s room, to see the child sleeping soundly, looking so innocent and vulnerable, with her little hands, open palms up, on the pillow. The child was her responsibility now, an awesome task, really. Strange how she was coming to love her, yet she had the very eyes of her father.

She went into her own room, lit another lamp, and prepared for bed. She took up a volume of poetry from Louise’s bookshelf and brought the lamp to her bedside table to read. It was with a feeling of sheer luxury that she looked at her watch, read the hour as well after eleven, and knew it was not too late. There was no need to be up at seven. She would read till midnight. She was relaxed, happy, looking forward to the shopping trip tomorrow, when she extinguished her lamp at midnight and fell into that light doze that precedes sleep. Before she was quite unconscious, her arm was rudely jostled. She jumped in her bed, her heart pounding.

“They’re back,” a soft voice said, giggling at her alarm.

“Oh, it’s you, Bobbie,” Delsie said, shaking herself awake. “You frightened the life out of me. Who is back? What’s the matter?” she asked, thinking in her confusion that the Bristcombes had been out, and that was why the house had been plunged into darkness when she returned.

“The pixies,” Bobbie said.

“Poor dear, you’ve had a bad dream. There are no pixies tonight. Were you frightened? Come and get into bed with me if you like. There’s plenty of room.”

Bobbie took immediate advantage of this tempting suggestion, and popped in with her stepmother. They were both sleepy, and were about to nod off when a slight sound was heard from the window. “It’s the pixies, Mama. I told you they were back,” Bobbie said, yawning in mid-sentence, as she snuggled deeper into the bed, no longer afraid of the pixies when she had protection.

Mrs. Grayshott listened, soon incontrovertibly aware that something was going forward in the orchard beyond her window. That it was either pixies or the ghost of her late husband never so much as occurred to her. It was only the ignorant, superstitious folks such as the Bristcombes who believed in pixies and putting a dish of salt by a corpse to prevent its rising. The sounds obviously came from a live, human trespasser, whose identity interested her.

She slid quietly from her bed to avoid waking the child, who was already breathing deeply, asleep. Tiptoeing to the window, she pulled back the curtains and strained her eyes out into the darkness. Nothing was visible. There was no moon, and the phalanx of low, spreading apple trees successfully concealed whatever was causing the noise. For some minutes Delsie remained, looking and wondering. She quietly opened the casement window and stuck her head out. The noises were more easily audible now, though they were still low noises, as of stealthy movement. She could hear the rattle of a harness, or chain, and the soft clop of hooves, moving slowly forward. Some indistinguishable sounds of human voices too, male voices, she knew. Men were in the orchard, with a horse or horses. What could it mean? The only conclusion she could come to was that some poor neighbors were stealing apples. The crop surely had been harvested by such a late date, but the windfalls perhaps were being taken up by some poor family. With a shrug of her shoulders, she closed the window and climbed back into the warm bed, not unduly disturbed, but determined to check the next morning to see if she could discover trace of the intruders. Familiar with the pinch of poverty, she did not begrudge the taking of the apples, but she would prefer in future that permission be asked. Foolish of them to have waited so long, too- December. The apples must be inedible by now.

There was no sleeping in, the next morning, with a wide-awake six-year-old in her bed, eager to be up and doing. The girl was up bright and early. Glancing at her watch, Delsie saw it was only seven. How quickly she had become accustomed to the luxury of sleeping in! But rest was impossible with the wiggling child hinting every minute that it was bright, so she dragged herself out of bed, and put on her frock while Bobbie skipped down the hall to dress herself. With a pang of sympathy for the lower orders, she told the girl not to awaken her governess. However, when Bobbie returned to her, her braids were neatly made up, and clearly it had not been her own childish fingers that had formed them so well.

They went belowstairs, to find no breakfast awaiting them at such an hour. Mrs. Bristcombe seemed startled to be run to earth in her kitchen, a single glimpse of which quite revolted Delsie for the filth all around. Another battle to come over this before the day was done. The kettle was not even on the boil. Mrs. Bristcombe was given orders to have breakfast ready by eight, and the ladies of the Cottage went outdoors for a walk. With a memory of the commotion in the orchard the night before, Delsie elected to walk there, though she would not disturb the child with an account of what had occurred.

To call it an orchard was really to overstate the case. There were only thirty trees, six rows of five. From the number of apples on the ground, and the state of them, it seemed highly unlikely it was this that had drawn the intruders. The apples were beyond eating, for the most part. They had been through several frosts, leaving them brown and withered. A few still clung to the branches, their skins puckered.

This waste shocked the thrifty ex-teacher. It was too late to save them this fall, but next year they would be gathered before they had turned. She observed that two trees growing in the midst of the others were dwarfed for some reason-noticeably runted compared to the rest. The apples did not appear to be of any different kind, so that could not account for it. She looked about her for signs of intruders. Clearly the men had not come for apples, so what had brought them? She could see no wheel tracks in the grass. There were considerable signs of traffic, the grass well trampled, with here and there in the earth the outline of what might have been horseshoes.

Bobbie was playing about, looking for edible apples on the ground. “Why are those two trees smaller than the others, do you know?” Delsie asked her.

“Those are the pixie trees,” the child answered.

“What do you mean?”

“That’s what Mrs. Bristcombe calls them, the pixie trees. They are the best ones in the orchard too, even though the smallest. She says they are worth more than all the others put together.”

Again Delsie looked at the apples still remaining on the dwarf trees, comparing them to those on the others. She picked one in better preservation than the others and tasted it. It was a plain pippin, tasty but not delicious. She walked to the other small tree and examined it. It too was just an ordinary tree, dwarfed for some reason. The soil perhaps was not good in these two spots, though it seemed odd, right in the middle of the small orchard, that some different soil should occur. Rocks beneath the ground, she thought, might account for it. The roots could have hit rock and not been allowed to flourish properly.