The wails seemed to come from the little pleasance where the fountain was, and Joy, as she ran, had a vision of a tree which Philip did climb with a ladder, and which he was quite capable of making Angela climb, too. The drop from his favorite limb was quite six feet.
Joy reached the pleasance first. It was Angela who was shrieking, but the worst had not quite happened. She had wriggled herself out of the safe crotch where Philip had put her, and it was Heaven's mercy that she had not fallen. But her frock was a stout blue gingham, fortunately, and a projecting branch-stump was thrust through it, holding her in a horizontal position along the bough. She was crying and wriggling, and in another minute or so she might have fallen to the ground. There was a slight chance that she would have struck on the fountain.
Joy was up the ladder and had the child in her arms in a moment. She held her till John, reaching up from below, relieved her of the burden, and set Angela on the grass, where she continued to cry.
"Such a lot of crying about just a little hole in your frock!" remarked Philip to Angela. "I should think you'd be ashamed!"
At which Angela stopped crying.
"Big hole!" she said defensively, with a gulped-down sob, and began smoothing it down, where she sat on the grass.
"Angela, Angela! Oh, Angela, is my baby hurt?" cried Phyllis, flying in from the garden path outside. She had heard the child cry, from where she and Allan were in the living-room, and with a mother's instinct had fled out and down to where the child was. Allan was hurrying behind her, but before he could catch her she had caught her foot on the root that stood out of the ground in a loop, and fallen headlong, striking her head on the edge of the marble basin.
She lay, white and still, where she had fallen. Allan was at her side in a moment, begging her to speak to him.
"Is she dead, John?" he demanded passionately of John, kneeling beside her. "Good God, man, can't you speak—is she dead?"
"She's stunned," John answered. "I think that's all."