He sauntered away from the merry-go-round and mingled with the crowd. All the stall-keepers were doing a brisk trade, but, above all, the market gardeners--their stalls were simply thronged. But, lo and behold! the fruit that they were selling was of the kind he had seen in the mysterious room of the Guildhall, and concealed inside the case of his grandfather's clock--it was fairy fruit; but the knowledge brought no sense of moral condemnation. Suddenly he realized that his throat was parched with thirst and that nothing would slake it but one of these translucent globes. The wizened old woman who was selling them cried out to him coaxingly, "Three for a penny, sir! Or, for you, I'll make it four for a penny--for the sake of your hazel eyes, lovey! You'll find them as grateful as dew to the flowers--four for a penny, pretty master. Don't say no!" But he had the curious feeling that one sometimes has in dreams, namely, that he himself was inventing what was happening to him, and could make it end as he chose. "Yes," he said to himself, "I am telling myself one of Hempie's old stories, about a youngest son who has been warned against eating anything offered to him by strangers, so, of course, I shall not touch it." So with a curt "No thank'ee, nothing doing today," he contemptuously turned his back on the old woman and her fruit. But whose was that shrill voice? Probably that of some cheapjack whose patter or whose wares, to judge from the closely-packed throng hiding him from view, had some particularly attractive quality. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, and, his curiosity aroused, Master Nathaniel joined the crowd of spectators. He could discern nothing but the top of a red head, but the patter was audible: "Now's your chance, gentlemen! Beauty doesn't keep, but rots like apples. Apple-shies! Four points if you hit her on the breast, six if you hit her on the mouth, and he who first gets twenty points wins the maid. Don't fight shy of the apple-shies! Apples and beauty do not keep--there's a worm in both. Step up, step up, gentlemen!" Yes, he had heard that voice before. He began to shoulder his way through the crowd. It proved curiously yielding, and he had no difficulty in reaching the centre of attraction, a wooden platform on which gesticulated, grimaced and pirouetted ... who but his rascally groom Willy Wisp, dressed as a harlequin. But Willy Wisp was not the strangest part of the spectacle. Out of the platform grew an apple tree, and tied to it was his own daughter, Prunella, while grouped around her in various attitudes of woe were the other Crabapple Blossoms. Suddenly Master Nathaniel felt convinced that this was not merely a story he was inventing himself, but, as well, it was a dream--a grotesque, illogical, synthesis of scraps of reality, to which he could add what elements he chose. "What's happening?" he asked his neighbour.