Well, it was a case of Shorty McCabe to the rescue, after all. "Coming up!" says I, and hops on the thing, holdin' out me paws.
She didn't need any more coaxin'. She scrabbled over that balcony rail and got a shoulder clutch on me that you couldn't have loosened with a crowbar. I gathered in the rest of her with my left hand and steadied myself with the other. Lucky she wasn't a heavy-weight, or that pot-holder wouldn't have stood the strain. It creaked some as we went down, but it held together.
"Street floor, all out!" says I, as I hit the grass.
But that didn't even get a wiggle out of her.
"It's all over," says I. "You're rescued."
Talk about your cling-stones! She was it. Never a move. I couldn't tell whether she'd fainted, or was too scared to let go. But it was up to me to do something. I couldn't stand there for the rest of the night holdin' a strange lady draped the way she was, and it didn't seem to be just the right thing to sit down to it. Besides, one of her elbows was tryin' to puncture my right lung.
"If you're over the fire panic, I'll try and hoist you back through the window, miss," says I.
She wasn't ready to do any conversin' then, though. She was just holdin' onto me like I was too good a thing to let slip.
"Well, it looks to me as though we'd got to make a front entrance," says I; "but I hope the audience'll be slim," and with that I starts to finish the lap around the house and make for the double doors.