The next evening when Bobby and Alice and Pink came to Grandma’s room, she was astonished to behold an ugly black-and-blue lump on Bobby’s forehead, right over his eye.
“Why, what’s this?” Grandma asked, laying down her knitting and examining the bruise. “Wait till I get the arnica, and then you can tell me all about it.”
And while she bathed Bobby’s swollen forehead with the arnica, Bobby told her how another boy had dared him to hang by his toes from the scaffolding of a half-finished house and how his feet had slipped and he had had a fall.
“He said I was afraid to try,” said Bobby, “but I showed him!”
“And you got hurt into the bargain,” remarked Grandma, taking up her knitting again. “Don’t you know, my dear, that it is sometimes braver to take a dare than not? There is a time to say ‘no,’ and the boy or girl who doesn’t know when to say ‘no’ is often foolhardy rather than brave. I didn’t always know that, though, and I’ll tell you how I learned it. When I was little I played so much with brother Charlie that in many ways I was like a boy. One of Charlie’s codes was that he would never take a dare, and so of course it became my code, too.
“One Friday night Betty Bard came home from school with me to stay until Saturday afternoon. It was in the fall, and the nuts were ripe. On the meathouse floor, spread out to dry, were chestnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, hickory nuts, and butternuts. Betty’s grandfather was our preacher. There were no nuts of any kind on the ground belonging to the parsonage, so we had been giving Betty some of our nuts. She had already gotten hickory nuts and chestnuts, and this evening we had gathered a bag of walnuts and we were out in the wood lot shelling them.
“We each had a flat stone to lay the nut on and another stone to hit it with. We wore old leather gloves to protect our hands, for the walnut juice makes an ugly brown stain. We would lay a nut on the flat stone, hit it hard with the other stone, and the green outer covering or shell would come off easily, leaving the walnut, which would then have to be dried.
“Not far from us Charlie sat cracking walnuts, left over from the year before, for the chickens. He would crack a nut and throw it to the chickens and they would pick the meat out with their beaks. Mother said walnut meats were good for the chickens and made the hens lay, and we often had to crack walnuts for the chickens. But this evening Charlie did not want to do it. He wanted to go on the hill to look at some traps he had set for rabbits, and he offered to give me his new slate pencil if I would crack the walnuts. Any other time I should have jumped at the chance of getting a new slate pencil so easily. But this evening, I wanted to help Betty shell her nuts so we would have time the next day to play and go down to the persimmon tree.
“‘Very well,’ declared Charlie. He said that if I wouldn’t help him, he wouldn’t go with us to the persimmon tree. And without him to shake the tree, how would we get the persimmons? We had an especially fine persimmon tree that my great-grandfather had planted, and Betty and I wanted to get the fruit that was in the top branches. Charlie had promised to climb the tree for us, but now he said he wouldn’t do it unless I would finish cracking the walnuts.
“‘All right, you needn’t,’ I replied. ‘We don’t want you. I’ll climb the tree myself. But really I did not think for a moment I would do any such thing, for, of all the trees around, grandfather’s persimmon, as we called it, was the hardest to climb.
“Charlie laughed mockingly.
“‘I dare you!’ he cried. ‘I double dare you!’
“I jumped up, and so did Betty, and we threw our gloves to the ground and started for the persimmon tree.
“‘Are you sure you can do it?’ whispered Betty.
“I had my doubts myself by this time, for, though I could go all over the gnarled old apple tree in the side yard and climb the cherry trees and the peach trees and any reasonably high tree, to climb to the top of grandfather’s persimmon was a different undertaking.
“Charlie saw us talking and thought I was weakening.
“‘If you can’t do it, Sarah,’ he said, ‘of course I’ll let you off.’
“‘I can do it all right,’ I answered grimly, but I wished with all my heart I hadn’t said I would do it in the first place.
“The lower limbs of the persimmon were so high from the ground that for a while it looked as if I shouldn’t even get into the tree at all. Charlie offered to boost me, but I scorned his help. When finally, with the aid of a fence rail and by ‘cooning,’ I reached the lowest branch, my hands were scratched and swollen and hurting dreadfully. But after that it wasn’t as hard. As I went up, slowly and carefully, Betty and Charlie, under the tree, watched me.
“‘Be careful, Sarah,’ Betty cautioned every little bit. ‘Do be careful.’
“‘Higher, higher!’ Charlie kept calling.
“At last I reached the top and looked down, and then the most dreadful thing happened: I got awfully sick—sick and dizzy. I closed my eyes tight and held to the trunk of the tree and felt as if I should fall any minute. If I should fall to the ground and be killed, then every one would say it was Charlie’s fault. And it wouldn’t be at all, for I should have known better than to try to climb the old tree. I thought about the new blue delaine dress which I had never worn—they could bury me in that. And then I tried to say my prayers, but I was so dizzy, oh, so dizzy, that I couldn’t remember a single word of them.
I tried to say my prayers but I was so dizzy that I couldn’t remember a single word of them
“I told Charlie and Betty I was dizzy and that I was afraid I’d fall.
“At first they thought I was fooling, but they soon saw I was in earnest.
“‘Hold on tight!’ Betty screamed. ‘Keep your eyes shut. Don’t be afraid, Sarah, we’ll save you.’
“Charlie ran around as if he were crazy, crying and shouting, ‘It’s my fault, it’s all my fault! Hold on tight, Sarah. I’ll bring Stanley. He’ll get you down. Hold on!’
“‘No, no!’ cried Betty when Charlie started off at a run. ‘Come back, Charlie. We mustn’t leave her that way, she might fall. You’ll have to tie her in the tree.’
“Betty had on a new pinafore made out of strong gingham. She took it off and with Charlie’s knife they slit it into strips from neck to hem and knotted them together and Charlie climbed the tree and tied the gingham around my waist and to the trunk of the tree so that I couldn’t fall out.
“Then Charlie ran to the house for help, and it didn’t take Father and Stanley long to get there. Stanley carried me down to the lower branches and handed me to Father, and in a little while I felt all right again.
“I thought Father would think I was brave, but he didn’t at all. He was cross because Charlie had urged me to do such a foolish thing and because I hadn’t had courage to say I was afraid. He said we would have to take our own money to buy gingham for another apron for Betty. We did, and Aggie made it, and it was prettier than the one she had torn up, for Aggie worked a cross-stitch pattern in red around the hem.
“For a long time I could not bear to go near grandfather’s persimmon tree, and I have never forgotten the lesson I learned that day.”