Brownsmith's Boy: A Romance in a Garden

by George Manville Fenn

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.

I turned sharply round, holding tightly with one hand; but Shock’s back was turned to me, and he was picking apples most diligently.

I looked about, and there was no one else near, the trees being too small for anyone to hide behind their trunks. Shock did not look in my direction, but worked away, and I at last, as the sting grew less, went on with mine.

“I know it was him,” I said to myself angrily. “If I catch him at it—”

I made some kind of mental vow about what I would do, finished filling my basket, went down and emptied it, and ascended the ladder again just as he was doing the same, but I might have been a hundred miles away for all the notice he took of me.

I had just begun picking again, and was glancing over my shoulder to see if he was going to play any antics, when he began to ascend his ladder, and I went on.

Thump!