the edge of a little town
called Athens. We was nigh the bank of a crick, and they was a grove
there. We was camped jest outside of a wood-lot fence, and back in
through the trees from us they was a house with a hedge fence all around
it. They was apple trees and all kind of flower bushes and things inside
of the hedge. The second day we was there I takes a walk back through
the wood-lot, and along past the house, and they was one of these here
early harvest apple trees spilling apples through a gap in the fence.
Them is a mighty sweet and juicy kind of apple, and I picks one up and
bites into it.

"I think you might have asked for it," says some one.

CHAPTER VI

I looks up, and that was how I got acquainted with Martha. She was
eating one herself, setting up in the tree like a boy. In her lap was a
book she had been reading. She was leaning back into the fork two limbs
made so as not to tumble.

"Well," I says, "can I have one?"

"You've eaten it already," she says, "so there isn't any use begging for
it now."

I seen she was a tease, that girl, and I would of give anything to of
been able to tease her right back agin. But I couldn't think of nothing
to say, so I jest stands there kind o' dumb like, thinking what a dern
purty girl she was, and thinking how dumb I must look, and I felt my
face getting red. Doctor Kirby would of thought of something to say
right off. And after I got back to camp I would think of something
myself. But I couldn't think of nothing bright, so I says:

"Well, then, you give me another one!"

She gives the core of the one she has been eating a toss at me. But I
ketched it, and made like I was going to throw it back at her real hard.
She slung up her arm, and dodged back, and she dropped her book.

I thinks to myself I'll learn that girl to get sassy and make me feel
like a dumb-head, even if she is purty. So I don't say a word. I jest
picks up that book and sticks it under my arm and walks away slow with
it to where they was a stump a little ways off, not fur from the crick,
and sets down with my back to her and opens it. And I was trying all the
time to think of something smart to say to her. But I couldn't of done
it if I was to be shot. Still, I thinks to myself, no girl can sass me
and not get sassed back, neither.

I hearn a scramble behind me which I knowed was her getting out of that
tree. And in a minute she was in front of me, mad.

"Give me my book," she says