Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/386

 He swung his lithe body across a comfortable-looking crotch, where he sat straddle and gazed in round-eyed wonder at the wealth about him, within reach of his hand, his to capture and devour, with only a few hornets buzzing appreciatively at one or two of the ripest pears.

"Yum! Yum!" said Lonely O'Malley aloud, in rapt anticipation.

First he tasted an apple. He tried to make the resulting smack inaudible, but that was out of the question. Never could one of the apples of the Hesperides have tasted sweeter on the lips of Hercules himself than did that Strawberry Red to the mouth of Lonely O'Malley. Never had he bitten rapturously into fruit like unto this of Cap'n Steiner's.

Then he tried a Brandy wine pear. His eyes rolled up ecstatically, his lips clucked and smacked, as he licked the too opulent juices from his sticky fingers. He reached for another and then another, selecting those round which the hornets buzzed thickest, the ripest and sweetest and juiciest, going back to the apples once more, and still unable for the life