“I have a piece of good news,” announced grandfather one afternoon a few days later, as he came up on the front veranda. He had driven into the village directly after the noon-day dinner and had just returned. “Where is your grandmother?”

Then he stopped short and eyed the children keenly. They were each sitting in a big chair, in attitudes too much doubled up for mere cozy comfort, and they were neither of them talking—a fact sufficient in itself to make one suspect that everything was not just as it should be. They sprang up with assumed spryness at sound of grandfather’s voice.

“What’s the news? Tell us!” cried Christopher.

“Yes, do, please,” echoed Jane.

Grandfather thought they looked pale.

“Where is your grandmother?” he repeated.

“She is sitting with Mrs. Hartwell-Jones. Mrs. Hartwell-Jones has a headache.”

“Hum. And what have you two been doing, without any one to look after you?”

“Playing, sir.”

“Playing where?”

A spasm crossed Jane’s face. She swallowed hard and began to talk very fast.

“We’ve just been playing out in the orchard with my dolls—where I play most every afternoon, grandfather. Juno brings her pups out there and——” She swallowed hard again.

Christopher collapsed suddenly into the nearest chair and bent double with a howl of pain. Jane began to cry.

“Playing in the orchard,” repeated grandfather gravely, looking at them each in turn. “Oh, why didn’t I have Perk stay in from the fields to look after you! Kit, how many green apples did you eat?”

“I don’t exactly know, sir,” came a small voice from the depths of a big chair. “I lost count after the eighth but it wasn’t many more.”

“More than eight!”

It was grandfather’s turn to drop into a chair. The chair was not very near so that he almost dropped on to the floor. But the twins were too miserable to laugh.

“They weren’t very big,” moaned Christopher.

“That made them all the greener,” replied his grandfather grimly.

“I only ate six, grandfather,” put in Jane consolingly. “I felt as if I’d had enough after three, but I couldn’t stop there, you know.”

In spite of his anxiety grandfather laughed. Then he got up to go in search of grandmother. She appeared in the doorway just then, looking very comfortable and cool in a fresh white dress.

“Mrs. Hartwell-Jones’s head is better, children, and she would like to see you up in her——” she began and stopped short.

“What is the matter with the children?” she cried, looking at them in great alarm.

“Jane ate six green apples and Kit lost count after the eighth. Is there anybody handy to send for the doctor?”

Grandmother looked dismayed, but faced the situation bravely.

“A drink of hot peppermint water will fix them, I think,” she said. “And if that doesn’t castor oil will. Dr. Greene has been called to Westside to take charge of a typhoid fever case and won’t be back to-night.”

After the children had been put to bed with warm, soothing drinks, and had had hot milk toast for supper, sitting up in bed with their wrappers on to eat it, Christopher suddenly bethought himself of grandfather’s good news.

“He never told us what it was!” he wailed to Jane.

“I wonder how he guessed about the apples so soon?” speculated Jane in reply. “I’ve played in the orchard ’most every day. I guess it was because you were playing with me.”

“Mean-y! Trying to put the blame on me! It was because you looked so queer and yellow, like biscuit dough.”

“I didn’t look any yellower than you. And I didn’t double up and howl, so there,” retorted Jane, indignantly.

Christopher was silenced for a moment by this home-thrust. Then he called triumphantly:

“I had a right to look yellower than you, ’cause I ate more apples. And I think I know what the good news is. The circus is comin’ day after to-morrow. I heard grandfather tell Mrs. Hartwell-Jones so.”

“Oh, Kit, how fine! Wouldn’t you just love to go?”

“We are going. Grandfather said we might when I first asked him.”

“Yes, I know, but perhaps he’ll change his mind now and not let us go, to punish us for being naughty about the apples.”

“But he promised! He’ll have to keep his word.”

“He didn’t really promise. He just said he’d see.”

“Well, that means the same. He meant yes.”

“Then I wonder what he will do to punish us?”

“Nothing. He’ll forgive us. Grandfathers are different from fathers about that.”

“But we’ve been naughty and deserve to be punished.”

“Well, isn’t it punishment enough, I’d like to know, to be put to bed in broad daylight?” demanded Christopher, tossing impatiently.

Just then Huldah came up for the milk toast bowls. She stood in the doorway between the children’s rooms and shook her head slowly as she looked from one bed to the other.

“I’m disapp’inted in you,” she said coldly.

“Oh, come now, Huldah, don’t rub it in,” pleaded Christopher.

“And we are as sorry as we can be,” added Jane.

“Well, you’ll lose some good apple pies by it,” remarked Huldah severely, picking up her tray. “Your grandfather was planning to have a picnic on circus day, an’ I was makin’ out to bake some apple pies for it—pies with lots of cinnamon—but apples’ll be scarce now, and we’ll have to be savin’ of ’em.”

“Oh, Huldah, we didn’t eat as many as that!” cried Jane, her pain coming back at the very idea.

“You must have eat ’most half a bushel between you.”

“My! Well, can’t you begin to be saving of them a little later in the summer, when there’s other things to make pie out of?” wheedled Christopher.

But Huldah shook her head and went away to her kitchen.

Jane lay thinking, soberly. She still felt weak and shaken after the sharp pain she had suffered, and found her bed very comfortable. Therefore she could not regard being put to bed so early as a punishment. Neither did she think it right that naughty children should go without punishment of some kind. It was not natural. It had never happened in any of her story-books, nor had it occurred in her own small experience, notwithstanding Christopher’s ideas about forgiving grandfathers. It stood to reason then that she and Christopher, having been naughty, must be punished. The most obvious punishment would be to keep them home from the circus. Grandfather had not actually promised to take them—nothing so solemn as “honest Injun” or “Cross my heart.” So perhaps he would not think he was breaking his word by keeping them at home.

Perhaps, if she and Christopher did something to show how sorry they were, deprived themselves of something, grandfather would think that was punishment enough. Soon the idea came to her.

“Kit,” she called, sitting up in bed, “are you asleep?”

“No, what you want?”

“Why, I think we ought—it seems to me—Huldah said we ate ’most half a bushel of apples, Kit. That’s an awful lot.”

“It’s not so many when you think of all there are left on the trees. It’s rubbish about Huldah’s having to save ’em. I know better ’n that. She just said that to make us uncomfortable, the mean thing.”

“Well, it was a lot, anyhow, and I think we ought to give ’em back.”

“Give ’em back! How could we? What do you mean?”

Christopher tumbled out of bed, his curiosity roused and coming in, huddled himself up on the foot of Jane’s cot.

“Why, don’t you think that your ’lowance an’ mine together ’d buy half a bushel of apples?” asked Jane eagerly, quite carried away by her heroic resolve.

“But I want my ’lowance to buy lemonade and peanuts with at the circus.”

“But maybe we can’t go to the circus.”

“Yes, we can. Grandfather promised.”

“No, he didn’t promise. He said ‘I’ll see.’ And now I guess he’ll keep us home, ’less we do something to show him we’re sorry. If we buy half a bushel of apples and give ’em to him in place of all those we ate, why, don’t you see? Maybe he’ll think that, and the stomach ache we’ve had, ’ll be punishment enough, without giving up the circus.”

“The stomach ache was enough punishment for me. I promised him I’d never eat any more green apples, and I won’t. But I want money to spend for lemonade at the circus.”

“I guess I like lemonade as well as you do, greedy, but I’d rather go to the circus without having it, than to miss the whole thing.”

“Well, so would I, silly. But do you honestly think grandfather would be so mean?”

“It wouldn’t be mean. It would be only fair,” declared Jane stoutly.

“Well, we’ll see about it in the morning,” answered Christopher, scuttling back to bed.

And that was all that Jane could get out of him, so that she went to sleep with her conscience only half clear. Because of course her fifteen cents would not do any good without Christopher’s. She knew enough about the prices of things to be sure of that.

Grandfather and grandmother were so cold and formal at breakfast the next morning, and avoided all mention of the circus so carefully that Christopher was forced to decide that for once Jane was right and they would better buy the half bushel of apples to show their repentance. They longed to consult Mrs. Hartwell-Jones, but that would mean telling the whole story, which they did not wish to do. Of course they did not know that “the lady who wrote books” had already heard the story from grandmother and had laughed over it until she cried.

After breakfast they held a hurried counsel and then ran out to the barn to find out who was going to the village that day. It turned out that Joshua himself was going, to have one of the horses shod. At first he refused to take the twins with him, saying that they were in disgrace and must remain quietly at home. It was only after they had explained their errand (under the most binding promises of secrecy) that he consented.

The ride into the village was interesting at all times, and now the whole countryside, ablaze with red and yellow circus posters, made driving between the decorated rail-fences most entertaining and lively. Joshua stopped in front of each pictorial long enough for the children to spell out the account of the wonders foretold and admire the gorgeous pictures, and then took away most of the charm by saying regretfully, each time they drove on:

“Just to think, you young ’uns might have seen all them things—if you hadn’t stole an’ eat up your gran’pa’s apples.”

“Suppose it should be Letty’s circus!” exclaimed Jane. “See, Kit, in that picture over there there are Shetland ponies. Oh, Kit, just suppose it should be!”

“Well, you needn’t count on it,” replied Christopher practically. “There are lots of trained Shetland ponies in the world beside Punch and Judy, and we don’t know if Letty is with the circus that have Punch and Judy, anyway. She may be jumping and tumbling again, like she was doing the first time we saw her.”

The village reached at length, Joshua bundled the twins out unceremoniously in front of the chief provision shop and bade them wait there for his return. Christopher was disappointed. He had hoped for the treat of watching the blacksmith at work. But Joshua had given him plainly to understand from the first that this expedition was one of business and not of pleasure, and he dared not complain.

The provision man was new in the village and did not know the twins. He did not think such small children worth much attention and went on arranging his baskets.

“Please, sir, how much are apples?” asked Christopher politely.

The man turned around, surprised by such a practical question and answered:

“Forty cents a basket.”

“Oh,” cried Jane and Christopher together, “that’s too much!”

“It’s the market price,” said the man crossly.

“Oh, sir, we mean it’s too much for us to pay,” explained Jane hurriedly.

“I dare say it is,” replied the man coolly and turned away to wait on another customer.

The children stood listlessly at the corner, waiting for Joshua. Their hearts were heavy with disappointment at the failure of their plan. Even the thought that he would now have his money for peanuts at the circus failed to console Christopher, who had screwed himself up to the heroic point of self-denial.

Jane watched the people buying at the provision shop. They got all sorts of things: some bought several kinds of vegetables and meat, which they carried away in a basket; others bought small quantities, wrapped in paper bags. Presently a woman bought a small bag of apples which suggested to Jane that they might be able to do the same thing.

“Kit,” she said, “I think by a basket the man meant one of those great big baskets. Surely they hold more than half a bushel?”

“Don’t know how much half a bushel is,” replied Christopher, toeing the path with his boot.

“Well, I’m sure we didn’t eat as many as one of those basketfuls, anyhow. Just look at the size of it.”

“We stuffed a lot of ’em.”

“Well, anyway, let’s get as many as our money’ll buy,” proposed Jane. “We can buy any number ’cause I just saw a woman get some in a paper bag. It’ll show grandfather we are sorry and want to pay back, and perhaps Huldah was wrong about the half bushel.”

“Well, you’ll have to do the asking then,” said Christopher ungallantly. “That man is horrid. He thinks we’re nothing but kids.”

They approached the provision man again, who happened at that moment not to be occupied.

“How much—I mean, how many apples will thirty cents buy, please, sir?” asked Jane.

“Half a bushel.”

The twins looked at each other in delight.

“We’ll take ’em,” they cried together, and Christopher drew the thirty cents—two ten and two five cent pieces—from his trousers pocket.

They were very proud and excited all the way home. They hardly glanced at the circus posters, so eager were they to reach Sunnycrest and complete their sacrifice, and they kept urging Joshua to drive faster. They took turns sitting on the basket of fruit, they were so afraid that an apple might jostle out and be lost.

Grandfather, grandmother and Mrs. Hartwell-Jones were all sitting on the veranda. Mrs. Hartwell-Jones was able to limp downstairs once a day, by the aid of one of grandfather’s canes. Jane and Christopher carried the basket between them, up to the top of the steps. Christopher felt suddenly sheepish and hung his head, but Jane, brave in the consciousness of having done right, spoke up boldly:

“Grandfather, Huldah said we must have eaten ’most half a bushel of apples yesterday, and she couldn’t make so many apple pies as she could if we hadn’t eaten them, and we thought we ought to be punished for taking the apples without leave, didn’t we, Kit, and we didn’t want to be kept home from the circus, so we went to town with Josh and buyed—I mean bought, these to make up.”

“And it took all of both our ’lowances,” added Christopher virtuously.

How the grown-ups laughed! But there were tears in grandmother’s eyes as she thanked the twins and called Huldah to come and take the basket.

Later in the day, grandmother called Jane and Christopher into her own room and gave them each fifteen cents.

“I want you to understand that I am not doing it because I think you did not deserve the punishment of losing it,” she said seriously, “for it was wrong to have eaten the apples, both because it endangered your health to eat unripe fruit and because it is always a sin to take what does not belong to one without asking. But I wish to reward, and so encourage, the spirit you have both shown today of desiring to make atonement for wrong. God bless you, my dears.”