Once upon a time in a village called Sunnyville, there lived a little old woman named Granny Willow. Most folks said she was a witch, although Granny said herself she was no such thing. Still, she did so many odd things that people thought she must be.
Now it was many years since Sunnyville had had a witch, and it frowned upon her as hard as it could, for fear she might do some mischief. But Granny Willow smiled on Sunnyville and waved to it every day, when she put out her clean white hands to her garden gate. So each day, instead of anything unkind, she threw a handful of ripe strawberries, or a large bouquet of rosy carnation pinks over the fence at Sunnyville. “The whole town is but a flower-garden,” said Granny, having got some notion of her own.
But the children, looking over her fence, pluck the small sour yellow apples that hung over one corner of the garden. That was what made the villagers think she was a witch.
Now, one day when everybody happened to be in Sunnyville—often there isn’t a soul there on a Sunday, when it is emptiest of all—something did come to pass, so strange and sad that there was never such a happening while the world lasted. It was much like any other pleasant clear summer’s day; when all at once the sky turned dark, and right overhead, a black cloud with a hot wind blew down from the north-east. And all at once that hot wind turned as cold as ice, and away went much of Granny Willow’s garden fence in the shape of a circular piece of wood that she knew by the look of it; and all at once Karl’s bedroom window upstairs stood open to chill with the weather, and all at once Peter’s window was broken to pieces by the fearfully large hailstones, and half of Bernard’s chimney-pot came down with his hat therein to smash and scratch, in case his little brother Nick had ventured in without him.
“Oh, dear, dear! what will become of us?” said everybody in the fear of that storm. First the hailstones fell, and then came the wind. And then rolled peal on peal of thunder, and as fast as they grew faint with distance came silver arrows of lightning, and when one flash came more and more near, the air was filled with faces peeping out, and those faces all said it was a wicked old witch up in the sky tormenting them for plucking her apples.
Oh folly! to make sure I am right, I only say those in Sunnyville said this. You yourself know better than to think such a thing; for were the sky so near a very wicked old lady, and she sometimes looked so tenderly down on you you would be ashamed to say that question. “Oh dear, oh dear,” said everybody of ethnic Sunnyville.
“Heaven help all good folks this day,” cried Karl, Peter, and Bernard. “No harm to all its fair children.” they thought, with the same breath, in which they uttered.