“Well, when it’s a matter of fingers and toes, a girl is as good as a boy, if she has some strength and pluck, and it was a girl that showed me how to climb that tree. Nelly Green was her name; we were fast friends, she and I, and it was between us two that the solemn treaty and alliance—as the newspapers say—was concluded, by which we were to get possession of a young magpie. First it was agreed that when we had got our bird (we began at the wrong end, you see), I was to keep it, because Nelly’s mother would have no pets in the house. Secondly, she was to go no higher than the first branch, because girls were not fit to go worming themselves up to the tops of trees in petticoats. And then—let me see—she was to climb the bark first, because of her small hands and feet, and was to carry a rope round her waist, which she was to tie to a branch to help me in coming up after her. Fourthly, we were only to take one nestling, and to leave the others in peace. “Nelly said that this treaty was to be written out and signed with hedgehog’s blood. Where she got the notion from I can’t tell, but no hedgehog turned up in time, and we were neither of us too fond of writing, so we let that plan drop.” “What a dreadful tomboy she must have been, John!” said Mrs. Reynardson. “Well, I won’t say she wasn’t a bit of one,” said the farmer, with a twinkle in his eye; “but she turned out none so badly—none so badly, as you shall hear, my dear.” “We knew very well, of course, how the magpies were getting on, and when the eggs were hatched; and a few days after that, we got our rope and reached the hillock by a roundabout way, not to attract notice. Nelly had been studying the bark of that tree for many a day, though I never would let her go up lest she should come to grief coming down again. Up she went just like a creep-mouse, got a good seat on the branch and tied the rope round it. Then up I went too, hand over hand, and in five minutes more I was at the nest; a huge bit of building it was, roofed all over with sticks. The old birds flew round screaming, but I put one young bird in my pocket, and came down safely to where Nelly was sitting. Then the bird was put into _her_ pocket, and she let herself down by the rope; and lastly I untied the rope (for it would never have done to have left it there), and wondered how _I_ was to come down. “At last I resolved on climbing out on my stomach to the very end of the branch, where I could bear it down with my weight, and then dropping. But my weight was too little to pull the big branch down far, and as I came to the ground, I sprained my ankle badly. “However, there was the bird all safe, and that was the great thing. Nelly helped me home, and Mag was put into a wicker cage we had ready for him. Of course we got scolded, but I was in too great pain to mind, and Nelly was used to it from her mother, so we got off pretty well.