"O-oh! ugh! ah! Gypsy! Joy! I've got catched onto my buttons. My head's tippin' over the wrong way. Boo-hoo-hoo! Gypsy!"
The girls turned, and stood transfixed, and screamed till they lost their breath, and laughed till they cried.
Winnie, not being of a sentimental turn of mind, had regarded unmoved the flaming glories of the maple-leaves, and being influenced by the more earthly attractions of the chestnuts, had conceived the idea of seizing advantage of the girls' unpractical rapture to be the first on the field, and take entire and lawful possession thereof. Therefore had he made all manner of haste to crawl through the fence, and there had he stuck fast between two bars, balanced like a see-saw, his head going up and his feet going down, his feet going up and his head going down.
Gypsy pulled him out as well as she could between her spasms of laughter.
"I don't see anythin' to laugh at," said Winnie, severely. "If you don't stop laughin' I'll go way off into the woods and be a Injun and never come home any more, and build me a house with a chimney to it, 'n' have baked beans for supper 'n' lots of chestnots, and a gun and a pistol, and I won't give you any! Goin' to stop laughin'?"
It did not take long to pick up the nuts that the wind and the frost had already strewn upon the ground, and everybody enjoyed it but Joy. She pricked her unaccustomed fingers on the sharp burs, and didn't like the nuts when she had tasted of them.
"They're not the kind of chestnuts we have in Boston," she said; "ours are soft like potatoes."
"Oh dear, oh dear, she thought they grew boiled!" and there was a great laugh. Joy colored, and did not relish it very much. 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.