“Sure!” cried Bunny.  “That’s the best way!  Charlie and I’ll help you up.”

“You won’t let me fall?” asked Sue.

“Course not!” declared Charlie.  “I’ve climbed lots of ladders!”

“So have I!” boasted Bunny Brown.  “And so have you, Sue Brown!”

“And can’t anybody see me if I go up the painter’s ladder?” asked Sue, who was feeling most uncomfortable, being clammy and wet.

“Nobody’ll see you!” declared Charlie.  “The ladder’s away off on one side of the sun parlor.  Mary can’t see you from the kitchen, and your mother and the company can’t see you.”

“Is the painter there?” Sue went on.  She was asking a good many questions and making a number of objections, I think.

“No, the painter isn’t there,” Charlie said.  “I saw him going back to the shop after more paint when we came down here.”

“All right then!” sighed Sue.  “Help me up the ladder!”

Cautiously the children approached it.  There the ladder stood, a big one, on a long slant leading from the ground to the roof of the one-story sun parlor.  From the roof of this extension were several windows Sue could climb into, one opening from her own room.

No one was in sight, and the painter had not come back.  Sue was just starting up the ladder, with Bunny going before her and Charlie following her, when the little girl happened to think of something else.

“S’posin’ the roof’s just been painted?” she asked.  “How can I walk on it?”

This was a poser for a moment until Charlie exclaimed: 

“If it is I’ll get some boards and we can lay them down to walk on.”

Sue had no further excuse for not going up the ladder, and she began to climb.  She reached the top, and it was found that the painter had spread his red mixture on only part of the roof.  There was room enough to walk on the unpainted part to her room window.

She was just climbing in, with the help of the boys, when she suddenly noticed something that made her exclaim: 

“Oh, look!  How did that happen?”

CHAPTER X

THE LEGACY

“What’s the matter?  What’s happened?” asked Bunny Brown.  “Are you going to fall, Sue?”

He was helping his sister on one side to climb in the window, and Charlie was on the other side of the little girl.

“No, I’m not going to fall,” Sue answered.  “But look at my dress!  It’s all red paint!”

And so it was!  In addition to being wet and muddy her skirt was now covered with big blotches of red paint—­the same kind of paint that was being put on the roof.

“How did it happen?” went on Sue, almost ready to cry again.  “I didn’t step in any paint, did I?”

“Even if you did I don’t see how it got on your dress,” said Charlie Star.

“There’s some on me, too!” cried Bunny Brown.  “There’s some on my pants!”