106 



THE RAT 



a little dessert from whatever stronghold Fate might 

 apportion to me, thinking in my ignorance that I 

 should find apples scattered about among the grass 

 all through the winter. I was a bit of a cockney, in 

 spite of having spent my whole life in the country, 

 and it would not have surprised me in the least to 

 find mushrooms growing on trees ; but I soon learnt 

 to be wiser than that. Wisdom comes quickly 

 when you live among men. That sounds like a 

 compliment, but I am not very sure that it is as 

 buttery a one as it sounds. Cockney or not, I had 

 not been long in that farm before I found my way 

 to the storehouse where the apples were kept, lying 

 on shelves. It would have been hard indeed to miss 

 the way to it, so sweet was the smell of those rosy- 

 cheeked and russet beauties ; by all the rules of rat- 

 land, the place ought to have been full of traps, 

 but I never saw a vestige of one during the whole 

 winter. 



I was not the only person who paid surreptitious 

 visits to those shelves. Ever since the Garden of 

 Eden apples have been a good bait to catch boys 

 and girls. Adam and Eve may have been grown 

 up in a way, but they had not been alive long 

 enough to have got over their taste for this delicious 

 fruit. If we were to change positions, and I were 



