Nevada County picayune., 1892-01-07
APPLE BLOSSOMS.

A dreary, dreary day. A north east, wind drove the slanting rain against the window panes, moaned around house corners, and shrieked down chimney tlues. One shivered involuntarily, watching the dripping pedestrians. Fay Alton leaned her face wearily against the window glass, and an occasional tear drop ped on the hands which lay idly clasped in her lap. She was listen ing to the conversation between her two sisters, Bertha and Beatrice, though seemingly intent on the pan orama spread out in the streets be- low. They were discussing some new book, just out, that everybody "who was anybody at all, :" was reading. They had not discovered the author s name, but were determined to pro- cure book and read forthwith. Fay, as she listened, did not care a stiver for the book or the author, but the title, Apple Blossoms, " reused bitter memories.
 Every summer they spent part of the warm weather at a rambling old farmhouse, and chief among It's at fractions to Fay was the large apple orchard; she had always loved apple blossoms so. She had reveled in their sweetness year after year, and to-day there arose a scene before her minds eye. The great old trees, with their crown of rosy whiteness, the green grass covered with the snowy petals that were drifting thither and thither in the warm breeze. At the foot of a gnarled tree was a grassy seat, which the farmer had made for her especial benefit; it had been formed of gravel and loam, and then turfed , and in this green, soft nook, with 1 the fragrant blossoms above her, and the flower leaves drifting around her, she had spent many happy hours, until-Last year sine had liv- ed her first love story there, and with cold, cruel hands she had put it from her, only to repent at leisure in the long year that followed,
 She never saw an apple blossom, or heard one speak of an orchard, that this scene did not come back to her; and now as Bee and Bertle spoke of the book that was making It's author famous, she wondered how any one could write q book with such a title, unless they had lived through just such an experience as she herself had.
 It had always, since she had been old enough to have one, been the orv of hers that men must he stir ring, willing workers, achieving great things by constant and unwear' jed effort.
 A good enough theory, she ac knowledged to herself, even now
 but what had she ever done? sh' questioned, mentally. When last year. Ivan Gerard, out under the waving trees, had asked her to be his wife, she had given him to un derstand that it could never be Why? she had often asked hersel since. Simply because he was talk ing vacation too, she had dlstruste' him, She did not know how anl active, busy man could sit ldl, through the long summer hours talking soft nothings, and makln' loving speeches, even to iascloat ing girl; ana she taught herself t' believe he must he drone. Sh
 tried to hiut at something like this as gently as she could, and she d''
 not understand the amused looI that passed oyer his handsome face she thought he certainly could no . have been in earnest, or ne woul'
 have cared little when the sacriIic
 she was making with her beloved