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INTRODUCTION.

THE PRIZE OF THE GOLDEN APPLE.

F the months of the year are feminine, like the fleeting hours, then the most feminine, the most variable, the greatest coquette of the whole twelve, is that nymph whom we call May-fol qui s'y fie. She is inconstant; she never remains of the same mind; she is faithless; she is full of whims; sometimes she is so sweet and charming that she carries all hearts, not by savage assault, but by the mere aspect and sight of her. Sometimes she is so full of smiles and winning ways that men, looking upon each other, wonder how any could be found to speak a word in her dispraise; she sings, and laughs, and crowns herself with flowers, and trips with light foot and careless ease over meadows ankle-deep with buttercups. During these her happy moods we all fall to being happy too; every poet thinks of rhymes to fit a sonnet; every musician reaches down his fiddle; and everywhere there is such a twanging of lyres, singing of madrigals, dancing of ballads, warbling of ditties, and universal chorus of praise, that it is enough to turn the head of any goddess, to say nothing of a mere minor deity and simple country nymph. And all in a moment-lo! -she changes; she frowns; she is cold; she sings no longer; she puts on sad-coloured robes; she is as forbidding as poor Miss February with her sealskins, her red nose, her frozen toes, and the cold in her head. Alas! poor May. Then the lyre, the theorbo, the viol, the bagpipe, the scrannel straw, the

lute, the dulcimer, tabor, and pipe are all, with one consent, silenced and put upon the shelves; the musicians sit down, sad; the poets tear up their unfinished lays; the songs cease; everybody goes home; doors and windows are shut tight, and the poor maid is left out of doors all in the cold, deploring, alone in her gloom to lament her caprice. Yet another hour, and she forgets her ill-humour; we forget it too: she is once more the sweet, the lovely, the blushing, merry, and merry-making month of May; we are grovelling slaves again.

It was in the evening of, perhaps, the most lovely day that this fickle goddess ever vouchsafed to England that four children were playing together under the trees of an ancient forest. The sun was going down, and the west was already making preparations to receive him with a grand illumination. The young leaves were at their bravest and brightest, and the air was heavy with the fragrance of the May blossom, because there is no such place in the world as this forest for the hawthorn. Three of the playing children were boys of thirteen, the fourth was a girl of about eleven. She ran, and jumped, and played with the boys as if she were a boy herself, being, in fact, as strong and sturdy as any boy of her age, with a length of limb which gave goodly promise for the future, to those who love their mistress and queen to be tall. They had been running and playing the whole afternoon and were now growing a little tired. When a boy begins to feel tired he jumps and runs harder than ever, and becomes rough, just to show that he is not tired at all. But when a girl feels tired she

wants to sit down. Presently, therefore, this young lady, who had been, all day long, sunshine and mirth, grew a little cross, and began to cry fie upon the boys for their rough handling, a fault which besets and spoils their sex, and to say severely that she wished there were no such things as boys, and that they ought not to have been invented-yet conscious all the time that she preferred boys to girls as playfellows-and that she should play no longer, but should leave them to bang each other with their shoulders and their elbows. The sky, in fact, become cloudy and the wind chill.

So she walked away, dangling her hat by the strings, in the direction of a fallen trunk, on which sat a man, thoughtfully regarding the group, with his chin upon his hand, and a contemplative cigarette between his lips. He rose to meet the girl, and took both her hands in his and kissed her forehead. This was her father.

He was a little man, though his daughter looked as if she would be tall; yet not a very little man. His narrow sloping shoulders-a feature one may remark more often in Paris than in London-his small head, and the neatness of his figure made him look smaller than he was. Small English men this man was a Frenchman-are generally sturdy and broad-shouldered, and nearly always grow fat when they reach the forties. But this was a thin man. In appearance he was extremely neat; he wore a frock-coat buttoned tightly; behind it was a white waistcoat; he had a flower in his buttonhole; he wore a pink and white necktie, very striking; his shirt-front and cuffs were perfect; his boots were highly polished; he was five-and-forty, but looked thirty; his hair was quite black and curly, without a touch of white in it; he wore a small black beard; his eyes were also black and as bright as steel. It is perhaps misleading to compare them with steel, because it is always the villain whose eye glitters like steel. Now M. Hector Philipon was not a villain at all. By no means. The light in his eyes came from the kindness of his heart, not from any villainous aims or wicked passions, and, in fact, though his beard and his hair were so very blackblack of the deepest dye, such as would have graced even a wicked uncle-he frightened nobody, not even strangers. And of course everybody in those parts knew very well that he was a most harmless and amiable person. He had a voice deep and full like the voice of a church organ; honey sweet too, as well as deep. And at sight of his little girl those

bright eyes became as soft as the eyes of a maiden in love. When he spoke, although his English was fluent and correct, you perceived a foreign accent. But he had been so long in the country and so far away from his own countrymen that the accent was slight. Yet he neither looked nor spoke like an Englishman.

"You are tired, Claire?"

"Not much, papa, but hot with so much running. And the boys began to push."

She sat beside him, laying her hand upon his arm. Already they were companions, this little girl and her father. Presently there arose a great shouting of the boys; a cloud fell upon the girl's brow, because they had learned already to play without her, and in half a minute she was forgotten. It was a very white brow over a face which might become beautiful. As yet, no one except a prophet (of whom there are lamentably few nowadays, and those few have their hands full of other things) could say anything about the child but that she was singularly like her father, only, a very uncommon thing, she had deep blue eyes, with dark eyebrows and black hair. This combination, so far as one can learn, happens nowadays hardly anywhere except in Tasmania, where it has been accounted for on various scientific grounds, such as, that the soil is strongly impregnated with phosphate-a thing in itself quite sufficient to account for anything; and that the air is remarkably charged with ozone-what cannot ozone effect?-and that the proximity of the South Pole will account for everything not previously explained. All these reasons are excellent, and enable us to see quite satisfactorily why Tasmanian ladies get black hair and blue eyes. But they do not apply to Mademoiselle Claire, because she never was in Tasmania, and, I believe, is not likely to go there. The question why she got blue eyes and black hair may therefore be referred to the Royal Society.

She looked at them wrestling and running, just as happily without her as with her, regretfully. She had thought, perhaps, that they would follow her and sit down on the trunk beside her, and refuse to play any longer because she would play no longer. At least, she did not think that they would go on just as if she were not in existence. Boys are truly horrid creatures. They are born with none of the finer shades. And neglect is the greatest insult one human being can offer to another. Presently she slipped off her seat upon the trunk and opened the lid of a basket. They had

been having a little inconsiderable picnic, a cheap picnic, with cold tea in a bottle, and bread and butter, and bread and honey, and a little fruit. The bottle was empty, and the bread and butter and honey were all eaten up. But there was lying, in the corner, the last of the oranges.

She took it out.

"Papa," she said, "shall the boys race for it?"

"They shall," replied her father. "We will finish with a race. Boys," he shouted, "we will finish with a race-Claire holds the prize. The course shall be what? Then, mark it out for yourselves."

He looked on with a smile, which was not the smile of benevolence, or of affection, or of good manners, or of condescension, or of interest or anticipation, because he really did not care about the excitement of the race at all, but of philosophy. He smiled, because he remarked the little coquetry of his daughter and the emulation of the boys.

As for Claire, the sunshine had returned to her face, the sky was clear again, the wind was warm; the boys were going to fight for her gifts; any woman at any age appreciates this discernment of beauty. Her eyes were bright and her black locks were blown across her face. The boys meanwhile, as if a kingdom depended on the result, measured the ground, pacing side by side. When they were quite satisfied that they had got an exact two hundred yards they stood in a line waiting the signal.

"She holds," murmured Mr. Philipon, "the gift of the golden apple. This was long ago the cause of discord, and she is happy because she has it to bestow. Instead of three goddesses I see three schoolboys; instead of a shepherd there is a girl. Why does one think of Paris? Yet they will all grow up, and perhaps some day the golden apple will be a golden ring, and . . . aha! Claire, my angel, thou wilt be worth many golden apples. Are you ready, brave boys? Ready all? Go!"

When he dropped his handkerchief the lads started with a rush. The biggest and tallest of them took the lead and kept it. He was closely pressed by a slighter-built boy, who promised to make a good second; long behind these two toiled the third, who was of shorter frame and ran as if he were in bad condition, panting laboriously yet not giving in.

and not too clever. Those arrive-eh !—who are not so much cleverer than their neighbours. To have too many ideas is to be incompris, uncomprehended; no one understood my ideas when I was young. The world belongs to Will. No! he loses ! the boy with many thoughts wins-no-it is over-they are even. Now, in the big race which may come afterwards, to whom would the girl bestow the prize? An orange or an apple may be divided in halves, but a woman? No; she is like the Republic, One and Indivisible."

In fact the race seemed in the first boy's hands; he was ten clear feet ahead, there were but twenty feet between him and the girl, who clapped her hands and cried out; he turned to laugh at the second: it was a sad example of pride before a fall; his foot caught in a tuft of grass and he was grassed. He was up in a moment, but he was already overlapped, and although he made up the difference it was a dead heat, and they were in neck and neck.

The third boy continued the race long after it was hopeless, and came in with a smiling and satisfied face.

The Frenchman patted this boy on the head approvingly.

"You did well," he said. "Never know that you are beaten. Then you will always feel the pride of victory. My daughter, divide the prize into four portions and give Olinthus one of the quarters."

"I was winning easily," cried the tallest lad. He was as handsome a boy as you may wish to see anywhere, with clear, fresh complexion and brave outlook; a lad of mettle who liked fair fighting and the rigour of the game; a boy with plenty of ability, as was shown by his broad forehead and clearcut nostril, yet perhaps without the yearning for books which makes a scholar and a writer.

"Ha! ha!" laughed the other. "So you were, Will; I own that. All the better for me that you fell down."

"All fair, Allen. But it is a beastly sell." Allen laughed again. He was a much handsomer boy, but his face wanted the strength that lay in the other's; his eyes were full and light, his lips were mobile, his forehead was high rather than broad.

Claire hesitated between the two. While she hesitated Will took the prize out of her hand.