Jake and Mrs. Martin both replied that they
were no hands for that drink, unless 't was a drop right from the
press, or a taste o' good hard cider towards the spring of the year;
and Mrs. Thacher soon returned with some slices of cake in a plate and
some apples held in her apron. One of her neighbors took the candle as
she reached up to put it on the floor, and when the trap door was
closed again all three drew up to the table and had a little feast.
The cake was of a kind peculiar to its maker, who prided herself upon
never being without it; and there was some trick of her hand or a
secret ingredient which was withheld when she responded with apparent
cheerfulness to requests for its recipe. As for the apples, they were
grown upon an old tree, one of whose limbs had been grafted with some
unknown variety of fruit so long ago that the history was forgotten;
only that an English gardener, many years before, had brought some
cuttings from the old country, and one of them had somehow come into
the possession of John Thacher's grandfather when grafted fruit was a
thing to be treasured and jealously guarded. It had been told that
when the elder Thacher had given away cuttings he had always stolen to
the orchards in the night afterward and ruined them. However, when the
family had grown more generous in later years it had seemed to be
without avail, for, on their neighbors' trees or their own, the
English apples had proved worthless. Whether it were some favoring
quality in that spot of soil or in the sturdy old native tree itself,
the rich golden apples had grown there, year after year, in
perfection, but nowhere else.
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