"I can't. I daren't move."
"Oh, nonsense," said Beth; "just follow me. I shall go and leave you if you don't. You shouldn't have come up if you were afraid."
"You made me," Bernadine whimpered with her eyes shut.
"Of course it was me!" said Beth, on her way back to the skylight. "You haven't a will of your own, I suppose!"
"You aren't leaving me, Beth!" Bernadine cried in an agony. "Don't go! I'm frightened! Help me down! I'll tell mamma!"
"Then there you'll sit, tell-pie-tit," Beth chanted, as she let herself down through the skylight.
Presently she appeared on the other side of the street, and performed a war-dance of delight as she looked up at her sister, prone upon the roof-ridge.
"You do look so funny, Bernadine," she cried. "Your petticoats are nohow; and you seem to have only one leg, and it is so long and thin!"
Bernadine howled aloud. Mrs. Caldwell was not at home; but the cry brought Mrs. Davy out in her spectacles. When she saw the child's dangerous predicament, she seized Beth and shook her emphatically.
"Oh, thank you," said Beth.