The drink was really good; not thin, nor sweet, but round and full and generous, with a fine yellow flame twinkling through the green when one held it up to the light.  It was like a stray sunbeam hovering on the grass in a deep orchard, and he swallowed the glassful with relish, and had some more, warmly commending it.  Mr. Morgan was touched.

“I see you do know a good thing, sir,” he said.  “Is, indeed, now, it’s good stuff, though it’s my own makin’.  My old grandfather he planted the trees in the time of the wars, and he was a very good judge of an apple in his day and generation.  And a famous grafter he was, to be sure.  You will never see no swelling in the trees he grafted at all whatever.  Now there’s James Morris, Penyrhaul, he’s a famous grafter, too, and yet them Redstreaks he grafted for me five year ago, they be all swollen-like below the graft already.  Would you like to taste a Blemmin pippin, now, Master Lucian? there be a few left in the loft, I believe.”

Lucian said he should like an apple very much, and the farmer went out by another door, and Annie stayed in the kitchen talking.  She said Mrs. Trevor, her married sister, was coming to them soon to spend a few days.

“She’s got such a beautiful baby,” said Annie, “and he’s quite sensible-like already, though he’s only nine months old.  Mary would like to see you, sir, if you would be so kind as to step in; that is, if it’s not troubling you at all, Master Lucian.  I suppose you must be getting a fine scholar now, sir?”

“I am doing pretty well, thank you,” said the boy.  “I was first in my form last term.”

“Fancy!  To think of that!  D’you hear, father, what a scholar Master Lucian be getting?”

“He be a rare grammarian, I’m sure,” said the farmer.  “You do take after your father, sir; I always do say that nobody have got such a good deliverance in the pulpit.”

Lucian did not find the Blenheim Orange as good as the cider, but he ate it with all the appearance of relish, and put another, with thanks, in his pocket.  He thanked the farmer again when he got up to go; and Annie curtsied and smiled, and wished him good-day, and welcome, kindly.

Lucian heard her saying to her father as he went out what a nice-mannered young gentleman he was getting, to be sure; and he went on his way, thinking that Annie was really very pretty, and speculating as to whether he would have the courage to kiss her, if they met in a dark lane.  He was quite sure she would only laugh, and say, “Oh, Master Lucian!”

For many months he had occasional fits of recollection, both cold and hot; but the bridge of time, gradually lengthening, made those dreadful and delicious images grow more and more indistinct, till at last they all passed into that wonderland which a youth looks back upon in amazement, not knowing why this used to be a symbol of terror or that of joy.  At the end of each term he would come home and find his father