Mollie put her head out at the door and looked up into the branches. They were very much forked, and upon every difficult branch Hugh had nailed steps and made a railing. In some of the forks he had inserted wooden seats, others he had left to nature. The topmost seat was almost at the summit of the tree, and behind it was firmly lashed a flagpole, with a Union Jack hanging limply in the still air, and a lantern with green and red glass on two of its sides. Near the door of the little house there hung from a stout branch a curious-looking canvas bag, broadly tubular in shape, and with a small brass tap at the lower end. The tree was thickly foliaged, but the leaves were delicate and lacy, and, though they formed an admirable screen for the climbers, a good view of the surrounding country was to be obtained between them, and even through them in some places. Mollie decided to climb to the top and look about. "That's our look-out," Hugh explained. "We can see the enemy from there a long time before the enemy can see us." "'O Pip', is what _we_ call it," said Mollie. "Who is the enemy?" "It all depends," Hugh replied evasively. "Now, Prue, look alive." Mollie was a level-headed climber when she had something reasonably solid beneath her feet; no one unfamiliar with the vagaries of the green ladder could be expected to climb it with enthusiasm. She crawled out of the house by the little door again, found her road to the nearest staircase, and climbed this way and that among the leafy branches till she reached the Look-out. There she settled herself comfortably and examined her surroundings near and far, whilst the other two laid the carpet and tacked up the blanket, now cut into three strips by Prudence. "She looks as if she were hemming sheets for missionaries," Mollie said to herself, as she watched Prudence doing execution on the blanket with a large pair of scissors. "It would be almost impossible for any girl to be as good as Prue looks; it's her eyelashes, and the way she does her hair."