In Apple-Blossom Time (Paperback)

Excerpt: ... for a bird to light upon. Even birds fled from the Carder farm. The great elm could have sheltered many, but the feathered creatures seemed not to trust it. Perhaps a reason lay in the fact that numbers of cats lived under the barn and outhouses. Nearly always one might be seen crouching and crawling along the ground looking cautiously to the right and left. None was ever kept for a pet or allowed in the house or fed. They lived on rats, mice, birds, and the field mice, and were practically wild animals. In their frightened, suspicious actions at sight of a human being, Geraldine recognized a reflection of her own mental attitude; and she pitied the poor things even while they excited her repugnance. Spring and no birds, she thought sadly, gathering her few wild flowers when the cows had gone home that second afternoon. She strained her eyes down the driveway, Blankness. Blankness everywhere. At the house, misery. The old fairy tales came to her mind. Tales where the captive princess pines and hopes alternately. "'On the second day all happened as before, '" she murmured in quotation. It was always on the third day that something really came to pass, she remembered, and she scanned the sky for threatening clouds. Ah, if it should rain to-morrow and the leaden hours should drag by in that odious house After having indulged a ray of hope, such a prospect seemed unbearable. In her r