“What you doing?” I demanded, before I could see what she was doing.
“This,” she said.
I stooped. And she had a little maple tree, for which she was hollowing a home with a rusty fire-shovel that she had brought with her.
“It’s the one Delia Dart pulled out,” she said. “I thought it’d be kind of nice to put it here. In your yard. You could bring the water, if you want.”
I brought the water. Together we bent in the dusk, and we set out the little tree, near the back gate, close to my play-house.
“We’d ought to say a verse or something,” I said vaguely.
“I can’t think of any,” Mary Elizabeth objected.
Neither could I, but you had to say something when you planted a tree. And a line was as good as a verse.
“‘God is love’ ’s good enough,” said Mary Elizabeth, stamping down the earth. Then we dismissed the event, and hung briefly above the back gate. Somehow, I was feeling a great and welcome sense of relief.
