THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES
is a sight worth any man’s seeing. After all, you had better have gone for the apples yourself.’
‘No matter,’ replied Hercules. ‘You have had a pleasant ramble, and have done the business as well as I could. I heartily thank you for your trouble. And now, as I have a long way to go, and am rather in haste,–and as the king, my cousin, is anxious to receive the golden apples,–will you be kind enough to take the sky off my shoulders again?’
‘Why, as to that,’ said the giant, chucking the golden apples into the air twenty miles high, or thereabouts, and catching them as they came down,–‘as to that, my good friend, I consider you a little unreasonable. Cannot I carry the golden apples to the king, your cousin, much quicker than you could? As his majesty is in such a hurry to get them, I promise you to take my longest strides. And, besides, I have no fancy for burdening myself with the sky, just now.’
Here Hercules grew impatient, and gave a great shrug of his shoulders. It being now twilight, you might have seen two or three stars tumble out of their places. Everybody on earth looked upward in affright, thinking that the sky might be going to fall next.
‘Oh, that will never do!’ cried Giant Atlas, with a great roar of laughter. ‘I have not let fall so many stars within the last five centuries. By the time you have stood there as long as I did, you will begin to learn patience!’
‘What!’ shouted Hercules, very wrathfully, ‘do you intend to make me bear this burden for ever?’
‘We will see about that, one of these days,’ answered
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