“And filling Mark’s pockets out of his own, Tom ran off.
“It so happened,” said Beachamwell turning herself round with a tired air when she got to this point in her story—“it so happened, that Mark having stopped so long to talk with Tommy Crab, did not get home till his mother had her things off and the tablecloth on; and then being in a great hurry to help her, and a rather heedless little boy besides; there being moreover but one table in the room, Mark laid his six apples upon the sill of the window which was open. For it was a soft autumn day—the birds giving another concert in the still air, and the sunshine lying warm and bright upon everything. The apples looked quite brilliant as they lay in the window, and as Mark eat his queer little Thanksgiving dinner of bread and a bit of corned beef, he looked at them from time to time with great pleasure.
“But when it was almost time for the apples to come on table as dessert, Mark suddenly cried out,
“‘Mother! where are my six apples?’
“‘Why on the window-sill,’ said his mother.
“‘There aren’t but five! there aren’t but five!’ said Mark. ‘I must have lost one coming home!—no I didn’t either.’ And running to the window, Mark looked out. There lay the sixth apple on the ground, appropriated as the Thanksgiving dinner of his mother’s two chickens.
“Mark could hardly keep from crying.
“‘It’s too bad!’ he said—‘when I hadn’t but just six! The ugly things!’
“‘You called them beauties this morning,’ said his mother.
“‘But just see my apple!’ said Mark—‘all dirty and pecked to pieces.’