“Well, I’ll have to hunt for it,” declared Bobby, looking at the wet and soggy ground 149 rather regretfully. “I hope there aren’t any snakes in there,” he added gloomily.
Meg had a horror of snakes and she didn’t want her dearly loved brother to go where they might be. Neither could she go away and leave the kitten. So, like the brave and affectionate little girl she was, she said she was going with Bobby.
They hoped with all their hearts they wouldn’t see a snake and they didn’t know what they would do if they did, but they had no intention of leaving that forlorn kitty cat to its own fate. And, as sometimes happens, it turned out that they did not have to go where they dreaded to go at all.
“I see it!” cried Meg suddenly, her sharp eyes having searched the bank near them, where it jutted out into the water. “Look, Bobby, in that crooked tree, hanging out over the brook.”
Bobby looked. At the very tip end of the longest branch, there clung a tiny ball of dirty white which must be the kitten.
“Scared to death,” commented Bobby. “I don’t see how we can get it down: the more 150 I shake the tree, the harder it will dig its claws in. That’s the way cats do.”
But Meg was ready with a plan.
“You climb up the tree,” she told Bobby, “and I’ll stand underneath and hold my skirts out; you can pull the cat off and drop it down into my lap.”
That was easier said than done, as they both discovered the next minute. For one thing, the water sucked past the tree in a current that forced Meg to brace her feet wide apart to keep her balance. And when Bobby had climbed the tree, he found the limb wasn’t strong enough to bear his weight and he couldn’t crawl out to the cat.
“If I had a pole, I could push her off,” he shouted to Meg.