"Hoy!" cried Mr. Carmody. "Hugo! Confound the boy! Hugo!"
For the first time the other looked up. Perceiving Mr. Carmody in his eyrie, he stood rigid, gazing with opened mouth. He might have been posing for a statue of Young Man Startled By Snake in Path While About to Bathe.
"Great Scot!" said Hugo, looking to his uncle's prejudiced eye exactly like the Dartford Warbler. "What on earth are you doing up there?"
Mr. Carmody would have writhed in irritation, had not prudence reminded him that he was thirty feet too high in the air to do that sort of thing.
"Never mind what I'm doing up here! Help me down."
"How did you get there?"
"Never mind how I got here!"
"But what," persisted Hugo insatiably, "is the big—or general—idea?"
Withheld from the relief of writhing, Mr. Carmody gritted his teeth.
"Put that ladder up," he said in a strained voice.