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They called him Dickey, using his last name for his first, which was Willy. Mrs. Rose straightened herself unconsciously when she found that out. “We can’t have two Willies in the family, anyhow,” said she; “we’ll have to call you Dickey.”

Once the Dickey boy’s married sister came to see him, and Mrs. Rose treated her with such stiff politeness that the girl, who was fair and pretty and gaudily dressed, told her husband when she got home that she would never go into that woman’s house again. Occasionally Mrs. Rose, who felt a duty in the matter, took Dickey to visit his little brothers and sisters at the almshouse. She even bought some peppermint-candy for him to take them. He really had many a little extra kindness shown him; sometimes Miss Elvira gave him a penny, and once Mr. Hiram Fairbanks gave him a sweet-apple tree–that was really quite a magnificent gift. Mrs. Rose could hardly believe it when Willy told her. “Well, I must say I never thought Hiram would do such a thing as that, close as he is,” said she. “I was terribly taken aback when he gave that tree to Willy, but this beats all. Why, odd years it might bring in twenty dollars!”

“Uncle Hiram gave it to him,” Willy repeated. “I was a-showin’ Dickey my apple-tree, and Uncle Hiram he picked out another one, and he give it to him.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have believed it,” said Mrs. Rose.

Nobody else would have believed that Hiram Fairbanks, careful old bachelor that he was, would have been so touched by the Dickey boy’s innocent, wistful face staring up at the boughs of Willy’s apple-tree. It was fall, and the apples had all been harvested. Dickey would get no practical benefit from his tree until next season, but there was no calculating the comfort he took with it from the minute it came into his possession. Every minute he could get, at first, he hurried off to the orchard and sat down under its boughs. He felt as if he were literally under his own roof-tree. In the winter, when it was heavy with snow, he did not forsake it. There would be a circle of little tracks around the trunk.

Mrs. Rose told her brother that the boy was perfectly crazy about that apple-tree, and Hiram grinned shamefacedly.

All winter Dickey went with Willy to the district school, and split wood and brought water between times. Sometimes of an evening he sat soberly down with Willy and played checkers, but Willy always won. “He don’t try to beat,” Willy said. Sometimes they had pop-corn, and Dickey always shook the popper. Dickey said he wasn’t tired, if they asked him. All winter the silver spoons appeared on the table, and Dickey was treated with a fair show of confidence. It was not until spring that the sleeping suspicion of him awoke. Then one day Mrs. Rose counted her silver spoons, and found only twenty-three teaspoons. She stood at her kitchen table, and counted them over and over. Then she opened the kitchen door. “Elviry!” she called out, “Elviry, come here a minute! Look here,” she said, in a hushed voice, when Miss Elvira’s inquiring face had appeared at the door. Miss Elvira approached the table tremblingly.

“Count those spoons,” said Mrs. Rose.

Miss Elvira’s long slim fingers handled the jingling spoons. “There ain’t but twenty-three,” she said finally, in a scared voice.

“I expected it,” said Mrs. Rose. “Do you s’pose he took it?”

“Who else took it, I’d like to know?”

It was a beautiful May morning; the apple-trees were all in blossom. The Dickey boy had stolen over to look at his. It was a round hill of pink-and-white bloom. It was the apple year. Willy came to the stone wall and called him. “Dickey,” he cried, “Mother wants you;” and Dickey obeyed. Willy had run on ahead. He found Mrs. Rose, Miss Elvira, Willy, and the twenty-three teaspoons awaiting him in the kitchen. He shook his head to every question they asked him about the missing spoon. He turned quite pale; once in a while he whimpered; the tears streamed down his cheeks, but he only shook his head in that mute denial.