“Why?” I said.
“Ah! you’ll find out some day,” she said, shaking her head and then bustling off to her work.
I had not much companionship, for Ike was generally too busy to say a word, and though after the pear adventure Shock did nothing more annoying to me than to stand now and then upon his head, look at me upside down, and point and spar at me with his toes, we seemed to get to be no better friends.
He took to that trick all at once one day in a soft bit of newly dug earth. He was picking up stones, and I was sticking fresh labels at the ends of some rows of plants, when all at once he uttered a peculiar monkey-like noise, down went his head, up went his heels, and I stared in astonishment at first and then turned my back.
This always annoyed Shock; but one day when he stood up after his quaint fashion I was out of temper and had a bad headache, so I ran to him, and he struck at me with his feet, just as if they had been hands, only he could not have doubled them up. I was too quick for him though, and with a push drove him down.
He jumped up again directly and repeated the performance.
I knocked him down angrily.
He stood up again.
I knocked him down again.
And so on, again and again, when he turned and ran off laughing, and I went on with my work, vexed with myself for having shown temper.