Chapter Fifteen Synopsis of Discussion
Week of October 14, 2007
Chapter 15 – Anything Can Happen
Spring has arrived. Ann is home from school in Boston. She found the remains
of the corncob house but her apple-tree twig doll is nowhere to be found. Ann
is extremely upset at this loss. Miss Hickory wasn’t just a doll. “She
was a real person.”
Timothy and Ann walked through the apple orchards admiring the trees and their blossoms. They stopped at an old McIntosh that hadn’t been pruned or grafted in a long time. Timothy’s grandfather planted it. They are surprised at how good the old tree looks now. It is blooming thicker than ever before.
Crow is back and cawing from the upper part of the old tree. Timothy climbed up to see what that is all about. He followed Crow’s call until he came to a high blooming branch that pointed off yonder toward the mountain. It was pinker than pink and fluttered and danced like a ballerina. Crow sat just above. Ann was called to come up the tree. Timothy showed her the most flowery of all the branches. It’s a scion (a new graft put into an old tree to start it blooming and bearing again). They can’t figure out who put the branch in. Ann looked at the branch carefully and thinks it looks like Miss Hickory. Timothy says the branch is bound to sprout an apple some day. He just doesn’t understand how this happened. Crow flies off with a Caw! Caw! Haw! Haw! “Two-leggers! Think they can explain everything that goes on outdoors!”
As for Miss Hickory. She never knew she was a scion all along. She
is completely happy and would never have to do any hard thinking again. She
had a permanent home at last and some day would give Ann, who had recognized
her, a big red apple.
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After the horror of the previous chapter, this chapter has a happy
but unsatisfactory ending. I would definitely have preferred having Miss Hickory
continue to be a crotchety little twig person who talked to the animals and
tried to keep them in line!
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I think this chapter tries to mitigate some of the horror of the previous
chapter, by showing that Miss Hickory has gone on to give new life to an old
tree, but I'm still freaked about the talking head.
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I thought this chapter redeemed the previous chapter. And once you read this one, you can see what she was leading up to. But, as someone else said -- Oh the horror!!