“Now I’ll pull you out, Janet!” he cried. “This is as good as a rope.”
He stripped the leaves and little branches from the long, thin vine, which is really a rope of the woods, and then, holding one end, Ted tossed the other to his sister, who was standing below him in the bog. She caught it with one hand, holding the blue flowers in the other.
“Hold fast now, I’m going to pull!” cried Teddy. “I’ll pull and you wiggle your feet, and then they’ll come loose out of the mud and you can walk over where it’s hard ground.”
Well, Teddy, pulled and Janet tried to keep hold of her end of the grapevine rope, but as Teddy was stronger than she was, and as he was pulling with two hands, while she was holding with only one, and as the mud was very sticky, you can imagine what happened.
Teddy pulled the grapevine away from his sister, and she nearly fell over backward into the muddy puddle just behind her.
“You must take hold with both hands!” cried Teddy, as he, too, almost toppled over. “Take hold with both hands, and I’ll pull with both hands, and I’ll get you out.”
“I’ve got only one hand,” declared Janet. “I must hold on to my flowers.”
“Oh, let the flowers go!” ordered Teddy.
“No, I want ’em!” insisted Janet.
“Then I can’t pull you out,” was Teddy’s reply.