just outside the fence of the keeper's garden stood a crab-apple-tree, with crooked branches and apples sour as vinegar.
she had once stood in the middle of a thorn-thicket. but the thorns had died and rotted away; and now the apple-tree stood quite alone in a little green glade.
she was old and ugly and small. she could only just peep over the hazel-hedge into the garden, at the orange-pippin-tree and the russet-apple-tree, who stood and gleamed in the autumn sun with their great red-and-yellow fruit and looked far more important than the crab-apple-tree.
every morning, the keeper's dog came jogging round the fence to take a mouthful of fresh air and a little exercise. he had lost all his teeth and could see only with one eye. he always stopped for a bit when he came to the crab-apple-tree and rubbed himself against her:
"it's the fleas," said the dog.
"pray don't mind me in the least," replied the apple-tree. "we have known each other since the days when you were a puppy and the keeper used to thrash you with his whip when you wouldn't obey. i am always delighted to do an old friend a service. by the way, you have plenty of apple-trees nearer at hand ... in there, i mean, in the garden. why don't you rub yourself against them?"
"heaven forbid!" the dog. "all honour to the real apple-trees; they are right enough in their way; but you are so beautifully gnarled."
"i am the real apple-tree," said the tree, in an offended tone. "those in there are only monsters, whom men have deformed for their own use. they grow where the keeper put them and let him pluck them when he pleases; i am wild and free and my own mistress."
the dog rubbed himself and shook his wise old head:
"you ought really to have entered men's service too, old friend," he said. "it's good and snug there. and what else is to become of old fogeys like you and me? of course, we have to do what is required of us; but then we get what we want in return."
"perhaps it's there you got your fleas?" asked the apple-tree, sarcastically. "for you certainly have all you want of them!"
but the dog had already jogged back into the garden and did not hear.
