CHAPTER TWELVE.
AN AWKWARD PREDICAMENT.
For the next fortnight we were all very busy picking and packing fruit, and Ike was off every night about eleven or twelve with his load, coming back after market in the morning, and only doing a little work in the garden of an afternoon, and seeing to the packing ready for a fresh start in the night.
The weather was glorious, and the pears came on so fast that Shock and I were always picking so that they might not be too ripe.
It was a delightful time, for the novelty having gone off I was able to do my work with ease.

I did not try to move the ladder any more, so I had no accident of that kind; and though I slipped once or twice, I was able to save myself, and began to feel quite at home up in the trees.
Every now and then if Shock was anywhere near he played some monkey trick or another.

His idea evidently was to frighten me by seeming to fall or by hanging by hand or leg.

But he never succeeded now, for I knew him too well; and though I admired his daring at times, when he threw himself backwards on the ladder and slid down head foremost clinging with his legs, I did not run to his help.
In spite of the conversation I had had with him in the shed, we were no better friends next time we met, or rather when we nearly met, for whenever he saw me coming he turned his back and went off in another direction.
As I said, a fortnight had passed, and the fruit-picking was at its height as far as pears and apples went, when one night, after a very hot day, when the cart was waiting in the yard, loaded up high with bushel and half-bushel baskets, and the horse was enjoying his corn, and rattling his chain by the manger, I left Old Brownsmith smoking his pipe and reading a seed-list, and strolled out into the garden.
It was a starlight night, and very cool and pleasant, as I went down one of the paths and then back along another, trying to make out the blossoms of the nasturtiums that grew so thickly along the borders just where I was.
The air smelt so sweet and fresh that it seemed to do me good, but I was thinking that I must be getting back into the house and up to my bed, when the fancy took me that I should like to go down the path as far as Mrs Beeton's house, and look at the window where I used to sit when Shock pelted me with clay.
The path was made with ashes, so that my footsteps were very quiet, and as I walked in the shadow of a large row of pear-trees I was almost invisible.

In fact I could hardly see my own hand.
All at once I stopped short, for I heard a peculiar scratching noise and a whispering, and, though I could hardly distinguish anything, I was perfectly sure that somebody had climbed to the top of the wall, and was sitting there with a leg over our side, for I heard it rustling amongst the plum boughs.
"It's all right," was whispered; and then there was more scuffling, and it seemed to me that some one else had climbed up.
Then another and another, and then they seemed to pull up another one, so that I believed there were five people on the wall.
Then came some whispering, and I felt sure that they were boys, for one said: "Now, then, all together!" in a boyish voice, when there was a lot of rustling and scratching, and I could hear the plum-tree branches trained to the wall torn down, one breaking right off, as the intruders dropped over into our garden.
For the moment I was puzzled.