ETHEL was out in the little orchard south of the house with Minerva, looking for “queen’s lace.” She had two purposes in mind. To teach Minerva something more of nature and to make a conventionalized design of the ground plan of the flower for use in her everlasting embroidery.

“Mis. Vernon.”

“What is it, Minerva?”

“Don’t the apples we have in the city come from the country?”

“Why, yes,” said Ethel.

She told me of the conversation later, I being at the time fishing for trout (in all innocence) with James (who knew the law).

“Well, then, how come that apples here is so little and city apples is so big?”

“Why,” said Ethel, “these haven’t grown yet.”

“Do they grow on the tree?” said Minerva.

“Why, certainly. You surely didn’t suppose that they grew after they were picked.”

“But the stems is so little that I wouldn’t think they’d hold apples like I see in the grocery stores.”

“Why, but the stems grow, too.”

“Oh,” said Minerva.

Minerva’s ignorance of common things was a never-ending marvel.

“Who do you pay for these apples, Mis. Vernon,” she went on.

“Why, nobody. They go with the house.”

And then Minerva gave utterance to a wise remark.

“Ain’t it queer, Mis. Vernon, that in the country, where you don’t have to pay for apples, every man has apple trees of his own, and in the city, where you do have to pay, nobody has any?”

“Just what do you mean?” said Ethel, wishing (as she told me) to draw out Minerva’s thought.

“Why, I mean poor people in the city has to pay for apples, an’ in the country people don’t have to pay for ’em, but it don’t do no good, because they have their own trees.”

“Well, but if they didn’t have their own trees, they would have to pay for them,” said Ethel, puzzled.

“Yas’m, but people in the city, if they had trees,—I mean poor people, then they wouldn’t have to pay for apples and they could use their money for somethin’ else, and people in the country has more money than poor people in the city, and they don’t have to spend it on apples, because they have ’em on their own trees.”

“Oh, I see,” said Ethel. “You mean that it doesn’t seem fair that poor people in the city, who would appreciate apples on their own trees, if they had them, have to pay for apples, while in the country people who could afford to pay for apples don’t have to, but can go out and pick them.”

“Yas’m,” said Minerva. “I guess that’s what I meant.”

“Yes,” said Ethel. “That must have been just what you meant. There are a great many things that we can’t understand about those things, but you know that farmers sell their apples to the people in the city, and that’s one of the ways they make their money.”

Minerva thought a minute. “Apples on the stands in the city sells for five cents, and I’ve seen rows of trees up here full of apples.”

“They call them orchards,” said Ethel.

“Why don’t they call them apples?” asked Minerva.

“No, no, the rows of trees are called orchards, and if the farmers could sell the apples for five cents apiece they would make a great deal of money, but they sell them to other men, who sell them to others, and they sell them to the men who keep the apple stands. The farmers don’t get a cent apiece for them.”

Minerva’s mind must have been in good working order that day, for she now said,

“If the poor people in the city knew they could get them for nothing they would all come to the country. An’, Mis. Vernon,” said she, with a characteristic chuckle, “If the farmers knew they sold for five cents in the city they’d take ’em down theirselves and sell ’em.”

Even Minerva felt that the middle man was an excrescence.

They were still hunting for the queen’s lace when I returned with what was for me a fine string of trout. James had taken his string home.

“Oh, what beauties. Did James catch them for you?” said Ethel. “We’ll have them for lunch.” Minerva took the forked stick that held the half dozen, not one less than eight inches in length, and as soon as she had left, Ethel told me of her thoughtful conversation. She also told me that she despaired of getting any queen’s lace.

“I must send to the seedsman for some seeds and sprinkle it in the grass so that we may have some next year.”

“Do so,” said I with the tone that fits superior knowledge. “Do so, and help fill the cell of a model Massachusetts prison. Don’t you know that that’s wild carrot and it’s counted as big a nuisance as the Canada thistle. Don’t you know we’d be fined?”

“Well, certainly farmers don’t know a beautiful thing when they see it,” said Ethel jumping to an illogical conclusion. “Are you sure that it is a nuisance? It grew all over the grass in Barnham.”

“Yes, and they were shiftless people in that place. Here, give me your nature book.” I took it and soon found the page. “Here it is: ‘This is, perhaps, the “peskiest” of all the weeds with which he has to contend.’ The farmer may think it’s beautiful, but it isn’t beauty so much as a living that he is after. We have to obey the laws in a civilized state like Massachusetts. It’s a punishable offence to let it grow.”

“Well, I don’t se............