“But it wouldn’t be true,” I said.
“Wouldn’t it?” he replied, with a queer look. “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t; but I’ll tell him all the same.”
“No,” I cried, after a fight with a very cowardly feeling within me that seemed to be pulling me towards the creep-hole of escape, “I shall tell him myself.”
Ike turned off sharply, and walked straight to where the broken pear bough lay, jumped up and pulled down the place where it had snapped off, opened his knife, and trimmed the ragged place off clean, and then went back to his work.
“Now he’s offended,” I said to myself with a sigh; and I went on picking apples in terribly low spirits.
Chapter Ten.
My First Apple.
I had been working for about half an hour longer when I found I could get no more, and this time I went a little way and called Ike from where he was at work to move the ladder for me.