_Mother Grey's Apples_.--At the time I was a little girl,--you will not,
I am sure, be ungallant enough to inquire when that was, when I tell you
I am now a woman,--I remember that the nursery maid, whose duty it was
to wait upon myself and sisters, invariably said, if she found us out of
temper--"So, so! young ladies, you are in the sulks, eh? Well, sulk
away; you'll be like 'Mother Grey's apples,' you'll be sure to come
round again." We often inquired, on the return of fine weather, who
Mother Grey was, and what were the peculiar circumstances of the apples
coming round?--questions, however, which were always evaded. Now, as the
servant was a Cambridge girl, and had a brother a _gyp_, or bedmaker, at
one of the colleges, besides her uncle keeping the tennis court there, I
have often thought there must have been some college legend or tradition
in Alma Mater, of Mother Grey and her apples. Will any of your learned
correspondents, should it happen to fall within their knowledge, take
pity on the natural curiosity of the sex, by furnishing its details?