It was rather a delicate piece of work, and the children were scarcely assured of Sandyface's safety—nor was the old cat sure of it herself—until Neale, hanging the basket on the reversed garden rake, lowered the entire family to the ground.
"Sartain suah am glad to see dat ol' coat ob' mine again," mumbled Uncle Rufus, as everybody else was congratulating one another upon the safety of the cats. "I had a paper dollar tucked away ag'in some time w'en I'd need it, in de inside pocket of dat ol' coat. It moughty near got clean 'way f'om me, 'cause of dat boy's foolishness. Sartain suah am de baddes' boy I ever seen."
The consensus of opinion seemed to follow the bent of Uncle Rufus' mind. Sammy was in evil repute in the neighborhood in any case; this was considered the capsheaf.
Had it not been that the aerial tramway was so securely affixed to the two houses, and to take it down would be to deprive Tess, who was innocent, of some amusement, Mrs. Pinkney would have ordered the connections between the two houses severed at once.
As it was, she drove the shamefaced Sammy into the house ahead of her, and some of his boy acquaintances, lingering with ghoulish curiosity outside, heard unmistakable sounds of punishment being inflicted upon the culprit.
He was then sent up to his room to meditate. And just outside his screened window was the tantalizing tramway which Neale had repaired and which was again in good working order.
Sammy had been forbidden to use the new plaything; but the little Corner House girls soon began to feel sorry for him. Even Tess thought that his punishment was too hard.
"For he didn't really hurt Sandyface and the kittens. Only scared 'em," she said.
"But s'pose they'd've got dizzy and fell out—like I did out of the swing?" Dot observed, inclined to make the matter more serious even than her sister. "Then what would have happened?"
Tess nevertheless felt sorry for the culprit, and seeing his woe-begone and tear-stained face pressed close to his chamber window, she wrote the following on a piece of pasteboard, stood it upright in the basket and drew it across so that Sammy might read it: