For a moment or two Giles did not answer. Very still he stayed at the window, frowning across the street. The cat’s antics seemed now to have become almost a mad, jumping dance, growing wilder and wilder as the singing voice of the woman drew nearer.
‘ Apples! Apples! Fine pippins for sale! ’
And then at last the children saw her. The cracking of nuts could still be heard from the parents’ table on the ground floor. The children for a while were silent. Seeing the old woman was more important than talking. She had a long, very wrinkled face—a clever face, a wise one—but not unkind. She pushed her apple barrow before her with strong, even shoves, stopping once in a while to raise her hand to the side of her mouth while she made her call: ‘ Apples! ’
‘I don’t believe it,’ repeated Giles. ‘Reading people’s thoughts! If she could do it, why couldn’t anyone? If I stuck my head under a pillow, could you tell me what I was thinking?’
‘Of course I couldn’t,’ Anne whispered. ‘But that is what Mary Seymour said: all Agnes has to do is to look at you and she knows what is passing through your mind.’
‘ Apples! Apples! Fine pippins for sale! ’
The old woman’s voice rang out nearer and louder. She still stared straight ahead of her along the street, looking neither to right of her nor to left. At last she stopped beneath the children’s window, seemingly tired of crying to an almost empty street.
Anne craned her neck out through the casement.
‘Oh, Giles, what beautiful apples! I’m hungry.’
Giles smacked his lips and grunted, ‘Umph, look at that enormous red one, almost at the end of her barrow, Anne. I’d like that one, wouldn’t you? Um ... my!’
And then, for the first time, suddenly, Agnes the Applewoman looked up, straight at the children’s window. A kind and almost beautiful smile spread over her funny old wrinkled face. Without turning her eyes aside she reached out and grasped an apple, and with a queer quick twist of the wrist threw it straight up into the dormer window. It landed gently in Giles’s hands.
‘It’s the very one,’ whispered the boy. ‘The red one I chose!’
‘ Apples! Apples! Fine pippins for sale! ’ On went the Applewoman, on went the barrow.
The cat had disappeared from the roof; and as Agnes passed out of sight around the bend of the street, they saw the animal following at her heels.
‘ Apples! Apples! Fine pippins for sale! ’ The voice was now soft and distant.
‘Oh, my goodness, Giles!’ (Anne’s face was quite pale as she turned to her brother and pointed to the rosy fruit lying in his hands.) ‘The woman picked out the very apple you were longing for—the one you were already chewing in your mind. And she couldn’t possibly have heard a word you whispered. If that isn’t reading people’s minds, I’d like to know what is. Do you believe it now?’