It went sorely against the grain with him to sit idly by and do nothing, and soon he would be forced to some course of action. But the likelihood of failure, of falling an easy prey to manipulations that may prove catastrophic, stayed his hand whenever he almost made up his mind, and so he sat atop the bar and did not stir and another five minutes slipped away.
‘They are not so bad, Dwerryhouse,’ said Theo into the heavy silence.
Tobias looked sharply at him, and found his friend’s hazy green eyes bright and alert at last. ‘Of what do you speak?’
‘The apples,’ said Theo.
Tobias’s mouth twisted in a grimace, and he folded his arms in an old gesture of stubborn recalcitrance. ‘I beg to differ.’
‘Until you have tried, you cannot know.’
It was impossible for Tobias to contradict a statem
