ch. Gypsy was too
busy pulling off her burs to notice this. Presently the ground was quite
cleared.

"Now we must climb," said Gypsy. Gypsy was always the leader in their
plays; always made all their plans. Sarah Rowe was her particular
friend, and thought everything Gypsy did about right, and seldom opposed
her. Delia never opposed anybody.

"Oh, I don't know how to climb," said Joy, shrinking and shocked.

"But I'll show you. _This_ isn't anything; these branches are just as
low as they can be. Here, I'll go first and help you, and Sarah can come
next."

So up went Gypsy, nimble as a squirrel, over the low-hanging boughs that
swayed with her weight.

"Come, Joy! I can't wait."

Joy trembled and screamed, and came. She crawled a little ways up the
lowest of the branches, and stopped, frightened by the motion.

"Catch hold of the upper bough and stand up; then you can walk it,"
called Gypsy, half out of sight now among the thick leaves.

Joy did as she was told--her feet slipped, the lower branch swung away
from under her, and there she hung by both hands in mid-air. She was not
more than four feet from the ground, and could have jumped down without
the slightest difficulty, but that she was altogether too frightened to
do. So she swung back and forth like a lantern, screaming as loud as she
could scream.

Gypsy was peculiarly sensitive to anything funny, and she quite forgot
that Joy was really frightened; indeed, used as she was to the science
of tree-climbing all her life, that a girl could hang within four feet
of the ground, and not know enough to jump, seemed to her perfectly
incomprehensible.

"Jump, Joy, jump!" she called, between her shouts of laughter.

"No, no, don't, you might break your arm," cried Delia Guest, who hadn't
the slightest scruple about telling a falsehood if she were going to
have something to laugh at by the means. Poor Joy was between Scylla and
Charybdis. (If you don't know what that means, go and ask your big
brothers; make them leave their chess and their newspapers on the spot,
and read you what Mr. Virgil has to say about it.) If she hung on she
would wrench her arms; if she jumped, she should break them. She hung,
screaming, as long as she could, and dropped when she could hang no
longer, looking about in an astonishment that was irresistibly funny, at
finding herself alive and unhurt on the soft moss.

The girls were still laughing too hard to talk. Joy stood up with a