I ought to have slipped off back and told Mr Solomon, who would have made the gardener come from the lower cottage; but I did not think of that; I only listened and heard one of the thieves whisper to the other:
“Get up; you aren’t hurt. Come along.”
Then there was a rustling as they forced their way among the bushes, and went bang up against an espalier. This they skirted, coming close to me as I stood in the shadow of a pear-tree.
“Come along quick!” I heard; and then the two figures went on rustling and crashing among the black-currant bushes, so that I could smell the peculiar herbaceous medicine-scent they gave out.
I knew as well as if I had been told where they were going, and that was to a double row of beautiful great pears that were just ready to pick, and which I had noticed that morning, and again when I was sugaring the trees close by.
At first I had taken them for men, but by degrees, by the tone of their whispers and the faint sight I got of them now and then as they passed an open place, I knew that they were boys.
A few minutes before I had felt excited and nervous; then I felt less alarm. My first idea was to frighten them by shouting for the different men about the place; but as soon as I was sure that they were boys, a curiously pugnacious sensation came over me, and I determined to see if I couldn’t catch one of them and drag him up to Mr Solomon, for I felt sure that I should only have one to fight with, the other would be sure to run as hard as he could go.
I stopped short again with an unpleasant thought in my mind. Surely this could not be Shock with some companion.
No, it could not be he, I felt sure, and I was rather ashamed of having thought it as I crept on after the two thieves, so that I was quite near them when, as I expected they would, they stopped by the little thick heavily-laden trees.
“Look out! hold the bag and be quick,” was whispered; and then there was snapping of twigs, the rustling of leaves, and a couple of dull thuds as two pears fell.