it? I loved it; but I was so intent upon my work, so eager to
do it well, and I had had so much to think about, that it seemed to come
upon me like a surprise that the apples were good to eat.

Now that Shock had begun, and was crunching away famously as he worked,
I suddenly found that, though I was not so hot as I was after my
encounter, my mouth felt dry. I was very thirsty, and those apples
seemed to be the most tempting of any I had ever seen in my life.

But I would not touch one. I went higher up the ladder and picked; then
higher and higher till I was close to the top, holding on by the tall
stem of the tree picking some of the ripest apples I had yet gathered,
and swaying with a pleasant motion every time I reached here or there to
pick one at the end of a twig.

What beauties they seemed, and how, while those that grew in the shady
parts under the leaves, were of a delicate green, the ones I had picked
from out in the full sunshine were dark and ruddy and bronzed! How they
clustered together too, out here in the top of the tree, so thickly that
it seemed as if I should never get them all.

But by degrees I reached up and up where I could not take the basket,
and thrust the apples into my breast and pockets. One I had a
tremendous job to reach, after going a little lower to where my basket
hung to empty my pockets before climbing again. It was a splendid
fellow, the biggest yet, and growing right at the top of a twig.

It seemed dangerous to get up there, for it meant holding on by the
branch, and standing on the very top round of the ladder, and I
hesitated. Still I did not like to be beaten, and with the branch
bending I held on and went up and up, till I stood right at the top of
the ladder, and then cautiously raising my hand I was about to reach up
at and try to pick the apple, when something induced me to turn my head
and look in the direction of Shock's tree.

Sure enough he was watching me. I saw his face right up in the top; but
he turned it quickly, and there was a rustle and a crack as if he had
nearly fallen.

For a few moments this unsteadied me, and for the first time I began to
think that I was running great risks, and that I should fall. So
peculiar was the feeling that I clung tightly to the swaying bending
branch and shut my eyes.

The feeling went off as quickly as it came, for I set my teeth, and,
knowing that Shock was watching me, determined that he should not see I
was a