But Harry seemed suddenly grown deaf, and was now more than half out—fixing his fingers very firmly on the ledge of the window, and slowly dropping his legs downwards.

“Oh Harry! you will be killed!” screamed Laura. “Stop! stop! Harry, are you mad? can nobody stop him?”

But nobody could stop him, for, being so high above everybody’s head, Harry had it all his own way, and was now nearly hanging altogether out of the window, but he stopped a single minute, and called out, “Do not be frightened, Laura! I have behaved very ill, and deserve the worst that can happen. If I do break my head, it will save Mrs. Crabtree the trouble of breaking it for me, after I come down.”

The gardener now balanced himself steadily on the upper step of the ladder, and spread his arms out, while Harry slowly let himself drop. Laura tried to look on without screaming out, as that might have startled him, but the [130] ]scene became too frightful, so she closed her eyes, put her hands over her face and turned away, while her heart beat so violently, that it might almost have been heard. Even Mrs. Crabtree clasped her hands in an agony of alarm, while Mrs. Darwin put up her pocket handkerchief, and could not look on another moment. An awful pause took place, during which, a feather falling on the ground would have startled them, when suddenly a loud shout from Peter Grey and the other children, which was gaily echoed from the top of the ladder, made Laura venture to look up, and there was Harry safe in the gardener’s arms, who soon helped him down to the ground, where he immediately asked pardon of everybody for the fright he had given them.

There was no time for more than half a scold from Mrs. Crabtree, as Mrs. Darwin’s car had been waiting some time; so Harry said she might be owing him the rest, on some future occasion.

“Yes! and a hundred lashes besides!” added Peter Grey, laughing. “Pray touch him up well, Mrs. Crabtree, when you are about it. There is no law against cruelty to boys!”

This put Mrs. Crabtree into such a rage, that she followed Peter with a perfect hail-storm of angry words, till at last, for a joke, he put up Mrs. Darwin’s umbrella to screen himself, and immediately afterwards the car drove slowly off.

When uncle David heard all the adventures at Ivy Lodge, he listened most attentively to “the confessions of Master Harry Graham,” and shook his head in a most serious manner after they were concluded, saying, “I have always thought that boys are like cats, with nine lives at least! You should be hung up in a basket, Harry, as they do with unruly boys in the South Sea Islands, where such young gentlemen as you are left dangling in the air for days together without a possibility of escape!”

[131]
]“I would not care for that compared with being teazed and worried by Mrs. Crabtree. I really wish, uncle David, that Dr. Bell would order me never to be scolded any more! It is very bad for me! I generally feel an odd sort of over-all-ish-ness as soon as she begins; and I am getting too big now, for any thing but a birch-rod like Frank. How pleasant it is to be a grown-up man, uncle David, as you are, sitting all day at the club with your hat on your head, and nothing to do but look out of the window. That is what I call happiness!”

“But once upon a time, Harry,” said Lady Harriet, “when I stopped in the carriage for your uncle David at the club, he was in the middle of such a yawn at the window, that he very nearly dislocated his jaw! it was quite alarming to see him, and he told me in a great secret, that the longest and most tiresome hours of his life are, when he has nothing particular to do.”