Derry and I collapsed into hysterical mirth. My mother bundled us out into the garden and came out herself.

“Have you no heart?” she said. “To laugh at an unfortunate old man who probably never gets enough to eat!”

“Now we’re really not in,” I said, “because we’re out in the garden.”

Derry joined me in screeches of laughter.

“If I thought he could hear you,” my mother said fiercely to us, “I’d murder you both.”

“Well, it’s too late to answer the door now,” she added. “I couldn’t face him after this. I’ll make it up to him next week.”

There was sudden silence — no knocking, no shouting.

“He’s gone away,” my mother said, in a tone of guilty relief.

At that moment, the tousled head and avid eyes of the woman next door appeared over the wall that separated our garden from hers. “Mrs. Brennan!” she shouted. She had a powerful voice. “There’s an old fellow outside with apples for you. He says he’s been at your door for a half an hour. He says he comes regularly and he knows you’re depending on him. I told him you were in the garden. He must be back around at your door by now. There he is.”

There he was. The knocking had started again.

“Oh, God forgive me!” my mother cried. “That old villain! He must have known I was hiding from him.”

“What are you hiding for?” our neighbor shrieked. “Do you owe him?”

“Oh, no,” my mother said indignantly, “but I don’t want any apples.”

“Well, why don’t you just tell him to go about his business?”

“I will, of course. That’s what I’m going to do.”

“Just give him a piece of your mind for making a nuisance of himself and shut the door in his face,” commanded our neighbor, with relish.

My mother went into our kitchen, took her purse in her hand, and marched to the door, with Derry and me following. The old man was a pitiful sight. He had forgotten to take off his hat, and his eyes glittered, whether with anguish or with anger it would have been hard to say. He pushed the two bags of apples rudely into my mother’s arms without looking at her. She opened her purse to pay him and gave a cry of distress: “Didn’t I go and pay the grocer only an hour ago, and I’m fourpence short!” She handed him the money and showed him that it left her purse empty. “It’s all I have in the house at the minute,” she said.