My First Apple

I climbed the ladder again, picking as fast as I could to make up for
lost time; and as the sun shone so hotly and I kept on picking the
beautiful fruit with the bough giving and swaying so easily, I began to
feel more at ease once more. While I picked and filled and emptied my
basket I began to reason with myself and to think that after all Mr
Brownsmith would not be so very angry with me if I went to him boldly
and told the truth.

This thought cheered me wonderfully, and I was busily working away when
I heard the whistling and scratching noise made by somebody walking
sharply through the gooseberry bushes, and, looking round, there was Ike
carrying another ladder, and Shock coming along loaded with baskets,
evidently to go on picking apples from one of the neighbouring trees.

They neither of them spoke. Ike planted the ladder ready, and Shock
took a basket and ran up, and was hard at work by the time Ike was out
of sight.

I had hardly spoken to the boy since I had found him eating snails; and
as I went on picking with my back to him, and thinking of the poor child
being found crawling in the road and brought in a basket, and of his
always running away from the workhouse, I felt a kind of pity for him,
and determined to try if I could not help him, when all at once I felt a
sharp pain accompanying a severe blow on the leg, as if some one had
thrown a stone at me.