"Well, you may spring a rattle outside, anyway," said I; "and if hers
makes as much noise as ours, it'll be heard all the way here. So mind,
if she begins, you must jump down and cut home like mad."

Armed with these instructions and our thick sticks, Jem and I crept out
of the house before the sun was up or a bird awake. The air seemed cold
after our warm beds, and the dew was so drenching in the hedge bottoms,
and on the wayside weeds of our favourite lane, that we were soaked to
the knees before we began to force the hedge. I did not think that grass
and wild-flowers could have held so much wet. By the time that we had
crossed the orchard, and I was preparing to grip the grandly scored
trunk of the nearest walnut-tree with my chilly legs, the heavy peeling,
the hard cracking, and the tedious picking of a green walnut was as
little pleasurable a notion as I had in my brain.

All the same, I said (as firmly as my chattering teeth would allow) that
I was very glad we had come when we did, for that there certainly were
fewer walnuts on the tree than there had been the day before.

"She's been at them," said I, almost indignantly.

"Pickling," responded Jem with gloomy conciseness; and spurred by this
discovery to fresh enthusiasm for our exploit, we promptly planned
operations.

"I'll go up the tree," said I, "and beat, and you can pick them as they
fall."

Jem was, I fear, only too well accustomed to my arrogating the first
place in our joint undertakings, and after giving me "a leg up" to an