Then I spread two big slices of bread the best I could with my fingers, putting apple butter on one, and mashed potatoes on the other.

Leon leaned on the hoe and watched me coming.
He was a hungry boy, and lonesome too, but he couldn't be forced to say so.
"Laddie is at work in the barn," he said.
"I'm going to play in the creek," I answered.
Crossing our meadow there was a stream that had grassy banks, big trees, willows, bushes and vines for shade, a solid pebbly bed; it was all turns and bends so that the water hurried until it bubbled and sang as it went; in it lived tiny fish coloured brightly as flowers, beside it ran killdeer, plover and solemn blue herons almost as tall as I was came from the river to fish; for a place to play on an August afternoon, it couldn't be beaten.

The sheep had been put in the lower pasture; so the cross old Shropshire ram was not there to bother us.
"Come to the shade," I said to Leon, and when we were comfortably seated under a big maple weighted down with trailing grapevines, I offered the bread.

Leon took a piece in each hand and began to eat as if he were starving.

Laddie would have kissed me and said: "What a fine treat! Thank you, Little Sister." Leon was different.