Alfy soon placed the chair in the room and piled the hassocks on it. Then lightly stepping on to them, he was able to make his way to the table, and also to the sideboard. Next, by means of chairs and hassocks he made his way to the staircase, and, having hastily mounted it, put his head out of the nearest upstairs window and shouted, "Hullo, Mansy!"
"Oh! bless the boy!" exclaimed Mansy with a start. "You have got up there, have you? I do wish I was safe up there, too, Alfy!"
"You soon will be, Mansy," he replied cheerily.
"Oh! we are glad you've come," cried his sisters, as he met them and kissed them. "But how are we to get Mansy up? She can never climb in through the window!"
"She'd fall in the water," remarked Jane, "and there would be a pretty to-do!"
"Do you think we could pull the tub up with Mansy in it to the window?" asked Alfy.
"It would be very heavy," suggested Jane.
"And Mansy might fall out," exclaimed the younger sister, with eager face and wide-open eyes.
"The distance is not very great," remarked Alfy, as he leaned out of the window and looked down. "And it is less still, of course, up to the top sash of the window, where I got in. Oh! I know," he added joyfully; "we will push the table in the downstairs room close to the window and put a chair on it, and then, if we can pull Mansy up to the same level, she can creep in over the sashes of the window, on to the chair."
"Oh! that will be delightful," said the girls. But, at first, Mansy would not hear of it. Poor Mansy! her ideas of dignity had been sadly disturbed this evening. "Me pulled up in a washin' tub?" she exclaimed. "The idea! the very idea of such a thing! And I know you'd let me fall!"