Gertie, who had followed, stared up into the branches overhead, but Ernest, gazing after, caught no glimpse of Katy’s pink gingham or mischievous face.
“Bet you can’t find her,” jeered Jane; “boys aren’t smart as girls if they are so stuck on themselves.”
“Bet Alice hid her.”
“Bet she didn’t.”
At this moment a whistle at the side gate interrupted them. Ernest trilled in answer and a moment later Carol Brown and Sherman Dart, Ernest’s two sworn cronies, came round the corner with a whoop.
“You smarties can have the old book. Mother’ll make you give it back tonight, anyway.”
A chuckle overhead punctuated his sentence, and some fifteen feet above him, seated gracefully astride the comb of the low roof, Katy waved the book at him tantalizingly.
“Gee, how’d you get up there?”
By way of reply Katy opened the book at random and began to read:
“The third crusade which had opened so disastrously, was at last to be prosecuted with vigor. The eight days’ truce was over and Philip of France again led the assault upon the walls of Acre. King Richard slowly convalescing was borne to the scene of conflict where——”