"Here," said Joan. "I'll show you, godfather. But you mustn't tell Tom. It was half mean of him to tell you on me about climbing this tree."
She had led her uncle to the back of the old tree, where the underbrush clustered thickly, hiding a set of heavy iron pegs, which she had driven into the trunk, one above the other, until they were like an irregular set of steps.
"I did that with a great iron hammer," said Joan. "It took a whole morning. I stood on one as I drove in the other, and I never felt so much like my Joan of Arc as then."
"I should think so," said the Bishop, looking up at the iron perches. "Personally I should think it would have been easier, and certainly more school-girlish, to content yourself with candy at home."
"I know," said Joan; "but then I never did care for candy. I always loved the works of nature better than the arts of man." She spoke so sweetly and simply that though he really started at the last words, Bishop Hegan could not find it in his heart to laugh at them. He set his foot on the first iron peg, which at once yielded under his weight.
"Dear! dear!" he said, drawing back; "my rotundity or the weight of my divinity is too much for your ladder, Joan. No wild celebrating for me to-day. By-the-way, why aren't you children blowing off your fingers and your heads on this glorious Fourth? You, of all people, Joan, should not have a toe or finger left."
"Father doesn't allow fireworks here," said Joan; "you see, he can't make any exceptions for us, as we live on the works. There are never holidays for furnaces, and he can't very well allow the furnace-men to be playing at fire-crackers. Somehow I like it quiet this way much better. We can feel the day more solemnly than if we were playing all the time. I think if everybody would try to do something patriotic on the Fourth of July it would be beautiful, and ever so much better than firing off shooting-crackers. But then it's awfully hard to find patriotic things to do. I've tried every year, and I have never found one yet."
"And then most of us find more satisfaction in shooting-cracker patriotism," said Bishop Hegan, dryly. "Now, little girl, up with you; let me see how you can climb."
SHE SWAYED FROM BRANCH TO BRANCH.