"Very much, but not that kind."
Jeanne was usually a very well-behaved child, but one Saturday in June she fell from grace. An out-of-town visitor, a very uninteresting friend of Mrs. Huntington's, had expressed a wish to see the park. Pearl, Clara, and Jeanne were sent to escort her there. It was rather a bracing day. Walking sedately along the cement walks seemed, to high-spirited Jeanne, a very tame occupation. Presently she lagged behind to feed the crumbs she had thoughtfully concealed in her pocket to a sad squirrel with a skinny tail. He was not half as nice as the chipmunks that sometimes scampered out on the Cinder Pond dock, but he reminded her of those cheerful animals. The squirrel seized a crumb and scampered up a tree. Jeanne looked at the tree.
"Why," said she, "it's a climb-y tree just like that big one on the bank behind Old Captain's house. I wonder—"
Off came Jeanne's jacket. She dropped it on the grass, seized the lowest branch, and in three minutes was perched, like a bluebird, well toward the top of the tree.
About that time, her cousins missed her and turned back. Unhappily, the park policeman noticed the swaying of the topmost branches of that desecrated tree and hurried to investigate. Clara and Pearl arrived in time to hear the policeman shout:
"Here, boy! Come down from there. It's against the park rules to climb trees."
Jeanne climbed meekly down, much to the astonishment of the policeman, who grinned when he saw the expected boy.
"Well," said he, "you ain't the sort of bird I was lookin' for."
"I should think," said Pearl, who was deeply chagrined, "you'd be ashamed. At any rate, we're ashamed of you."
"I shall tell mother about it," said Clara, virtuously. (Clara's principal occupation, it seemed to Jeanne, was telling mother.) "The idea! Climbing trees in the park! Right before mother's company, too. I don't wonder that Harold calls you the Cinder Pond Savage."