She shook her head.  “Unless it was in a Puget Sound cloud effect at sunset.  That is what it reminds me of; a handful of Puget Sound sunset.”

The station master laughed softly.  “That’s about it, sure.  Now taste one and tell me what the flavor of a Wenatchee Jonathan is like.  No, that’s not quite ripe; try this.”

She set her small white teeth in the crimson cheek and tested the flavor deliberately, with the gravity of an epicure, while the boy watched her, his whole nervous frame keyed by her responsiveness to high pitch.  “It’s like nothing else in the world,” she said finally.  “No, wait, yes, it is.  It’s like condensed wine; a blend of the best; golden Angelica, red port, amber champagne, with just enough of old-fashioned cider to remind you it is an apple.”

The station master laughed again.  “Say, but you’ve got it all in, fine.”  He set the basket at her feet and stood looking down at her an uncertain moment.  “I would like awfully well to send you a box,” he added, and the flush of his bellflower was reflected in his cheek.

She gave him a swift upward glance and turned her face to the desert.  “Thank you, but when one is traveling, it is hard to give a certain address.”  In the pause that followed, she glanced again and smiled.  “I would like one or two of these samples, though, if you can spare them,” she compromised; “I shall be thirsty on that mountain road.”

“I can spare all you’ll take.”

“Thank you,” she repeated hastily.  “And you may be sure I shall look for your orchard when I reach Wenatchee.  The fruit on the trees must be beautiful.”

“It is.  It’s worth the drive up from Wenatchee just to see Hesperides Vale, and that special Eden of mine is the core.  You couldn’t miss it; about ten miles up and right on the river road.”

“I shall find it,” she nodded brightly.  “I am going that way to see a wild tract in a certain pocket of the valley.  I wonder”—­she started and turned a little to give him her direct look—­“if by any possibility it could be brought under your Peshastin ditch?”

He shook his head.  “Hardly.  I wouldn’t count on it.  Most of those pockets back in the benches are too high.  Some of them are cut off by ridges from one to six thousand feet.  Maybe your agent will talk of pumping water from the canal, but don’t you bite.  It means an expensive electric plant and several miles of private flume.  And perhaps he will show you how easy it’s going to be to tap the new High Line that’s building down the Wenatchee and on to the plateau across the Columbia thirty miles.  But it’s a big proposition to finance; in places they’ll have to bore through granite cliffs; and if the day ever comes when it’s finished far enough to benefit your tract, I doubt the water would reach your upper levels.  And say, what is the use of letting him talk you into buying a roof garden when, for one or two hundred dollars an acre, you can still get in on the ground floor?”