"Oh, I'm going to get mother!" exclaimed Flossie. "She won't want you to fall, Nan!"
"Well, I—I can't hold on much longer!" sobbed Nan.
Though if she had let go her grasp on the tree limb she would probably not have fallen, for one foot was tangled in the swing rope. However, hanging by one leg high in the air would not have been very pleasant. Nan was not enough of a circus performer for that, though she and Bert had often done "stunts" on a trapeze in the back yard at home when they gave "shows."
However, help was on its way to Nan. The excited story told by Harry and Bert to the two Mr. Bobbseys started both men into action. They got a long ladder and, having run with it to the tree, placed it up against the limb. Then Mr. Richard Bobbsey climbed up, while his brother held steady the foot of the ladder on the ground.
"Why, Nan!" exclaimed her father, as he climbed up to set her free, "what in the world made you do this?"
"I—I don't know, Daddy! But Bert and Harry climbed up, and they did it all right. But when I went up something slipped, and I nearly fell, and I grabbed the rope and the branch, and there I was!"
"Well, it's a good thing you stuck here instead of falling down there," and Mr. Bobbsey looked to the ground below. "You're all right now. Don't cry."
But Nan could not help crying a little, though she was glad she could feel her father's arms about her. Mr. Bobbsey soon loosened the little girl's leg from the loop of the rope, and then he carried her down the ladder.
"You're just like a fireman, aren't you, Daddy?" cried Freddie, as his father set Nan on the ground.
"Well, a little, yes," admitted Mr. Bobbsey, with a laugh. "But better not any more of you try those firemen tricks," he warned the children as the ladder was taken down.