Then Luke Wimble came back to set his trees into the soil, came across the fields one twilight with his spade on his shoulder, and that night there was playing again under the locust tree until the roistering surged out into the pasture beyond any shadows, beyond the mockernut tree, Hen and Cordie and Nan and Joe dancing, until Luke was begged to join in the play and he said that he would if Ellen would come. Then Ellen danced with them and her feet were light and her steps were quick, as eager as Hen’s or as light as Nannie’s, even more eager and light. She saw her shadow on the ground as she danced and she could scarcely take her eyes from it, for it was the shadow of girl with slim ankles and straight round thighs and supple shoulders. She danced with Luke Wimble or with Hen, and then with Luke again, and the moonlight made the blood run like cold liquid silver in her veins, and when Luke came back for her at the second turn his face was open like the moonlight.

‘I’ll shake you down a mockernut ball and that is the fruit of the mockernut tree, like a split golden apple. I’ll get you one and one for Nannie and one for Cordie, to dance with them in your hair.’

Those autumn mornings Ellen went from one labour to the next, her feet light and her lips softly singing some tune Nannie sang, and she remembered the odour of the mockernut hulls and remembered the soft feel of the turf underfoot, her eye seeing inwardly her slim shadow as it danced, a shadow taller than Nannie’s but as slim and light moving, or she walked proudly erect through her rooms and onto the platform behind the house, carrying this or that task forward, feeling that she had forgotten something but caring little for any lost recollections, living lightly and freely with the passing days, identified with Nannie, merged with her in the lightness of limb and in the vague, misty outward-flowing thought of her mind. Then Luke Wimble brought her an apple tree, a gift to her, and he set it out in a sunny, wind-sheltered place one noon of day. It was a Kentucky Bell, he said, a great red apple to ripen in the fall, delicious to eat in the hand and to store away for the winter. While he cut away the sod he talked of a red mulberry tree he had seen at the edge of a field, the leaves fallen now, but a glory it would be in the early summer, the leaves yellow-green then. He stopped then to take out his order book and read the names of the trees the farmers had bought.

‘J.B. Brown, six apple trees, Sweet Delicious and Early Harvest. I can see the Sweet Delicious where I set out in a row, like little girls a-waiten to bloom. Arland Booker, he took peaches, Sharons and Elbertas, a dozen trees. He’ll be right glad he took Elbertas when they come on to ripen, two or three years from now. A big ripe peach is like a promise in a wilderness and like the sweet breath of Jehovah in the early day.’ He would dig a little at the hole for the gift tree, spading with care. ‘Apple blossoms are a shy flower, did you ever notice? Pale white and close to the branch, up and down. I set out two Solways and ten Elbertas and four Carmens and a Mayflower today, a white cling that is, white meat and good any way you take it, juicy and full of sweet, and when I see you dance under the mockernut tree I says to myself, “She’s like a flower in bloom.”’