"But I'll show you. _This_ isn't anything; these branches are just as
low as they can be. Here, I'll go first and help you, and Sarah can come
next."

So up went Gypsy, nimble as a squirrel, over the low-hanging boughs that
swayed with her weight.

"Come, Joy! I can't wait."

Joy trembled and screamed, and came. She crawled a little ways up the
lowest of the branches, and stopped, frightened by the motion.

"Catch hold of the upper bough and stand up; then you can walk it,"
called Gypsy, half out of sight now among the thick leaves.

Joy did as she was told—her feet slipped, the lower branch swung away
from under her, and there she hung by both hands in mid-air. She was not
more than four feet from the ground, and could have jumped down without
the slightest difficulty, but that she was altogether too frightened to
do. So she swung back and forth like a lantern, screaming as loud as she
could scream.

Gypsy was peculiarly sensitive to anything funny, and she quite forgot
that Joy was really frightened; indeed, used as she was to the science
of tree-climbing all her life, that a girl could hang within four feet
of the ground, and not know enough to jump, seemed to her perfectly
incomprehensible.

"Jump, Joy, jump!" she called, between her shouts of laughter.