"I can't!" said Captain Kidd, who was terribly frightened, because the General was sure to be angry.
"Can't!" cried General Antenna fierce[p. 91]ly. "Can't! What do you mean, madam?" (Perhaps you did not know that Captain Kidd was a lady, as were also the General and the whole army, too!)
Captain Kidd's voice broke as she stammered an answer to General Antenna's rude demand.
"I know of only one stepladder in Pleasant Valley," she explained. "It belongs to Farmer Green. And it's so heavy that the whole army couldn't move it."
At that a shudder passed over General Antenna's fat body.
"Then we're as good as lost!" she shrieked. "Daddy Longlegs will defeat us. And I'll never hear the last of it."
And right there on the edge of the battle-field General Antenna shed so many bitter tears that Captain Kidd had to[p. 92] move aside slightly, to keep her feet from getting wet.
"Don't weep!" cried the Captain in a husky voice. "It's not your fault—really!"
"Whose is it, then?" asked the General brokenly.
"Why, Farmer Green is to blame, of course!" Captain Kidd replied. "If he hadn't made his stepladder so big we might have used it and won the battle just as easily as not."