“‘No, no!’ cried Betty when Charlie started off at a run. ‘Come back, Charlie. We mustn’t leave her that way, she might fall. You’ll have to tie her in the tree.’
“Betty had on a new pinafore made out of strong gingham. She took it off and with Charlie’s knife they slit it into strips from neck to hem and knotted them together and Charlie climbed the tree and tied the gingham around my waist and to the trunk of the tree so that I couldn’t fall out.
“Then Charlie ran to the house for help, and it didn’t take Father and Stanley long to get there. Stanley carried me down to the lower branches and handed me to Father, and in a little while I felt all right again.
“I thought Father would think I was brave, but he didn’t at all. He was cross because Charlie had urged me to do such a foolish thing and because I hadn’t had courage to say I was afraid. He said we would have to take our own money to buy gingham for another apron for Betty. We did, and Aggie made it, and it was prettier than the one she had torn up, for Aggie worked a cross-stitch pattern in red around the hem.
“For a long time I could not bear to go near grandfather’s persimmon tree, and I have never forgotten the lesson I learned that day.”
DOGS
Bobby wanted a dog. He never remembered having wanted anything so much in all his life before. If he had his choice, he would prefer a mahogany-colored bull terrier, he told Grandma, but would gladly take any kind of a dog—even a common yellow dog.
“It’s a shame you can’t have a dog,” said Grandma sympathetically. Every boy should have a dog, I say. We always had dogs—collies and hounds and ordinary dogs, and once we had a wonderful fox terrier. He belonged to brother Charlie, who loved dogs as much as any one I ever knew, though I had some claim on him, too. The way we got Sport, that was his name, well—you might like to hear about that.
“Mother was going to the city to visit Uncle John, and Charlie and I were going along. Neither of us had ever been on the steam cars before, and we were all excited about it. We talked of nothing else for days. I hardly noticed my new buttoned shoes or my velvet bonnet. Mother was excited, too, at the last. She wore a brown dress with a great many buttons up the front and a bonnet with a plume. I thought she looked beautiful, and I think Father did, too, for when he had put us in the train at Clayville it seemed as if he couldn’t leave us. He took us into the train and found us seats, and told Mother over and over where she was to change cars and what to do if Uncle John shouldn’t be there to meet us, and gave her so many directions that Mother got nervous.