maple

She had discovered that a lane opened out below the apple orchard and ran up through a belt of woodland; and she had explored it to its furthest end in all its delicious vagaries of brook and bridge, fir coppice and wild cherry arch, corners thick with fern, and branching byways of maple and mountain ash.

“Oh, Diana,” whispered Anne, finding it necessary to lean up against a maple tree for support, “do you really mean it?

Anne was curled up Turk-fashion on the hearthrug, gazing into that joyous glow where the sunshine of a hundred summers was being distilled from the maple cordwood.

Above the bridge the pond ran up into fringing groves of fir and maple and lay all darkly translucent in their wavering shadows.