“So young Collins was there to select one of the girls, as you’d choose an apple from a costermonger’s stall. A brisk look over the piled-up stock: one of the bigger ones, the riper ones – that one will do. They were all the same, after all, weren’t they? The were of good stock. All the same variety, from the same tree. Why bother looking any further, or making any particular scrutiny of the individual fruits?”
