He picked up an apple and held it disparagingly, at arm’s-length, in front of him. “Certainly they are going rotten,” said he simply. “And the more they rot the louder is the anger of the mistress when I carry them back. Your honour will listen--if apples rot is it the fault of the servant? No,” he answered himself with solid conviction, “it is the fault of God.” He sat in the sun content--content to sit and talk of his grievance with his load on the ground. I smiled at his dilemma, and he smiled back; but gravity quickly overtook him, it was a serious matter. “Seven days ago, when they were sound,” he went on, “the gardener himself took them and sold many. Now he gives me the command, and because I do not sell there is talk of a donkey.” “Truly you are no donkey, worthy one,” said I soothingly. “All the donkeys are employed by the washermen to carry home the clothes. You are a large, fine, useful Pahari. What is the price of the apples? Some of them are good.” “It is true talk that the mistress said ten annas a seer,” he replied eagerly, “but if your honour wishes to pay eight annas I will say that your honour, seeing the rottenness, would give no more.” I would not profit by the rottenness since it did not concern me, so he picked out of his best for me with exclamations, “Lo, how it is red!” “Listen, this one will be a honey-wallah!” and almost more polishing than I could bear. The cloud departed from his honest face, it was that I had paid for; and when Tiglath-Pileser passing by said that I had been imposed upon I was indignant. He, the master, would not have an apple though they are really very good, and neither do I feel so disposed; they must be made into a pudding. We talked for a little while of the annoyance of reaching that critical time of life when one looks askance at a casual apple. In early youth it is a trifle to be appropriated at any hour; between the ages of ten and fourteen it is preferable the last thing before going to bed. After that ensues a period of indifference, full of the conviction that there are things in the world more interesting than apples; and by the time one again realizes that there is nothing half so good, circumstances have changed so that it is most difficult to decide when to eat them. A raw apple in the American fashion before breakfast is admitted by the mass of mankind to have a too discouraging effect upon everything else, and all will grant that it is impossible to do justice to its flavour, impossible to cope with it in any way, after a meal. It is not elusive--like the grape or the lychee; it is far too much on the spot. There remains the impromptu occasion, but you have long since come to regard with horror anything “between meals.” A day arrives when the fact stares you in the face that there is no time at which to eat an apple. Tiglath-Pileser and I considered it together this morning; but we were philosophic, we didn’t mind, we remembered that up to