Dolly sat and racked his brains for a minute. “Well?” she called, and looking down he could just see her in the dim light standing with face upturned to him.
“Wait a bit,” he said. “I’m coming down again. Untie yourself and hang on to your end.”
He unfastened the knot beside him, and threw the end over a higher limb, and hauled up the slack from Ess, and dropped his own end, and came sliding down the double leathers.
“We’ll have to try another dodge,” he said. “You can use your own strength better to help me this way.”
He knotted a loop in one end, and passed it over her head and down to form a seat for her.
“Now, you sit in that,” he said, “and I’ll haul my end down, and you keep taking a fresh grip of the same downhaul end and pull it down at the same time, and that hoists you up. Now—ready—heave. Hoo-ray. Heave again.”
It was something of a struggle still, but this time it was successful, and Ess seated herself in the crotch of the tree.
Dolly tied one end to the seat of the buggy and lifted it from its place, and after Ess had made an end fast, swarmed up to her.
“We win,” he exclaimed triumphantly. “Now for our house-furnishing”; and he hoisted up the buggy seat, and, when he had found a convenient branch and fork, hauled the seat to it, and jambed it there, and lashed it securely. “Walk into my parlour,” he cried, and helped her to clamber to the seat, and when she was safely on it, showed her where to place her feet on a lower branch, and passed a turn of the rein round her and to the back of the seat. “Hoo-ray again,” he said at last. “Now you can’t fall out if you tried, and you can sit comfy or curl up on the seat, and have a snooze if you like.”
She smiled at him, very faintly, for the climb had exhausted her and it made her giddy to look down. So Dolly climbed to the seat beside her, and they sat together and watched the light spread and spread till they could see to the horizon all round them. And all the horizon was water.