The Girls of Central High on Track and Field
TextCHAPTER XV – ANOTHER RIVALRY ON THE FIELD
Eve Sitz had no rival at Central High when it came to putting the shot; but there were plenty of girls who essayed the broad jump – and some did almost if not quite as well as Eve. Notably Lou Potter, a senior who practiced assiduously and who had many friends who believed she would, in the end, best the Swiss girl.
“The meet is a long way off yet,” said one of Lou’s friends to Laura Belding. “That girl you juniors are boosting isn’t the only ‘hope’ of Central High.”
“Whom do you mean?” returned Mother Wit.
“That girl whose name sounds like a glass of vichy – what is it? Eve – ”
“And what about Eve Sitz?” demanded Bobby, who chanced to arrive in time to hear the senior’s remark.
“And here’s another fresh one,” said the senior, eyeing Bobby coolly. “Thinks she is going to grab off the quarter-mile.”
“You make me tired!” returned Bobby, promptly. “Is that what you call loyalty to the school? If you’ve got another girl faster than I am, trot her out. I won’t stand in her light.”
“Nor will Eve interfere with any girl who can beat her in jumping, or put the shot farther,” declared Laura, quickly.
“Oh, yes! That’s all very pretty talk. But Mrs. Case is favoring you. She is favoring the whole junior class. We weren’t doing all the athletic stunts last year when we were juniors – no, indeed!”
“Well, whose fault is it if the junior class stands better in after-hour athletics than the senior?” demanded Bobby, laughing.
“And you pushed yourselves into the basketball team even before you were juniors,” declared the other girl, angrily.
“Come, now!” returned Laura, warmly. “That’s not fair at all. If any of you seniors had shown any desire to play the game to win, Mrs. Case would have put you on the first team – you know that. But your class, as a whole, would rather dance, and go to parties, and attend the theatre, and all that. You know very well that Mrs. Case has often called our attention to the fact that late hours takes the vitality out of us, and makes success in the gym. and on the field impossible.”
“Thanks for your lecture, Mother Witless!” snapped the other girl. “But I don’t care for it. And let me tell you that Lou Potter is going to make your soda-water champion look cheap.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Bobby, as the older girl turned away. “Do you suppose we’ll be as high and mighty as all that when we get to be seniors, Laura?”
“I hope not – not even if we get to be patriarchs,” laughed Mother Wit. “But Miss Potter is making a good jump, just the same, Bobby. Eve isn’t going to have it all her own way.”
“Why, Eve’ll beat her easily,” declared Bobby, with confidence.
Eve Sitz did not find it so easy to score ahead of all her rivals, however. And Lou Potter’s record steadily grew better. Eve knew that she was doing her very best right along, whereas the senior was creeping up, creeping up – showing almost as good a record as Eve, and still forging on.
Magdeline Spink, of Lumberport, held the championship for putting the shot, and Eve knew that she had surpassed her score. In the broad jump it was almost as difficult for the contestants to learn their exact record as it was for the sprinters to learn theirs. If Mrs. Case measured the distance she kept the record secret.
Some of the seniors, especially those who were backing Lou Potter, began to make trouble in the meetings of the athletic committee, too. Heretofore no point had been made of the fact that the after-hour athletics were dominated by the junior class of Central High. That it was the fault of the present class of seniors if they were not in control of the League, did not now appeal to the disaffected.
Some of the junior and sophomore girls who, as Bobby said, were inclined to “toady” to members of the first class, took up cudgels for the seniors, too. Notably Lily Pendleton, who was forever aping the manners of her elders and always liked to associate with more mature girls.
And so, when there was friction in the committee meetings, Lily usually sided with the senior members.
“Why don’t you stick by your classmates, Lil?” demanded the hot-tempered Bobby, one afternoon, when the committee had been discussing plans for the June meet. It had already been decided that the inter-school field day exercises should be held on the grounds of Central High, that being by far the best field.
“Have I got to stick by you whether you’re right, or not, Bob Hargrew?” demanded Lily.
“But we’re right – of course.”
“I don’t think so. The seniors should have their say. We’ll want to boss when we are seniors.”
“They haven’t shown much interest in the scoring of Central High in athletic matters until lately,” Jess Morse said, quickly. “Why should they want to come in now and run it all?”
“They have the right,” declared Lily.
“Don’t see it – do you, Laura?” cried Bobby.
“If they only wouldn’t try to go against Mrs. Case’s wishes so frequently,” sighed Mother Wit, who would have conceded much for peace.
“They don’t propose to be bossed by the teachers all the time,” declared Lily. “And they’re right.”
Now, this attitude would have appealed to Bobby Hargrew a few months before. But she had learned a good bit of late.
“There is no use in our trying to run athletics in opposition to Mrs. Case – or Mr. Sharp,” she said.
“Or Gee Gee; eh, Bobby?” added Hester Grimes, slily.
As the girls crowded out of the committee room some of the boys were grouped at the corridor’s end, plainly waiting for their appearance. Chet Belding and Launcelot Darby, his chum, were waiting for Laura and Jess. That was a frequent occurrence. No boy ever waited for the fly-away Bobby; but there was with the two chums a tall, thin youth dressed in the most astonishing clothes that ever appeared in the corridors of a high school.
“Oh me, oh my!” cried Bobby, under her breath. “There’s Purt Sweet – and he looks like a negro minstrel.”
“My goodness me! He is dressed to kill, isn’t he?” giggled Jess.
For Prettyman Sweet, the sartorial example of Central High, was more than usually gay upon this occasion. And he was not waiting there by chance, it was plain.
“See! Lily is trotting off with him,” laughed Bobby. “They must have patched up a truce. Oh! and look at that collar!” and the wicked Bobby leaned far over the banister and sang gaily:
“He wore a collar extra high,
He wore a purple vest;
He wore his father’s patience out —
But why tell all the rest?”
“That saucy child!” exclaimed Lily, looking back. “She ought to be whipped.”
“You never can get even with her, doncher know,” drawled Purt, shaking his head. “Weally, I’d much like to try it; but I don’t know what to do.”
“And the rest of those girls, laughing, too,” snapped Lily. “Jess Morse and Laura are just as bad.”
“Well, weally – ”
“Oh, if you had half the pluck of a rabbit,” scolded Lily, “you’d do something to get square.”
Now, Lil Pendleton wronged Pretty Sweet. He was not particularly brave, it was true; but he would have done a good deal to “get even” with Bobby Hargrew for her sharp tongue. He had been the butt of her jokes for a long time and – Well, it is said even the worm will turn.
The following afternoon a sudden thunder shower kept some of the girls in the school building after most of the pupils had departed. It was a part of the junior class, and Bobby, as well as Laura and Jess, were among those kept by Miss Carrington after the regular session closed.
“I believe she knew we were due at the athletic field this afternoon,” grumbled Bobby, as they stood waiting at the foot of the tower stairs for the shower to pass.
“What good would it have done us to be at the gym. now?” laughed Laura. “This shower has spoiled open air work for the afternoon.”
“Bobby doesn’t believe Gee Gee ever gives us extra tasks because we deserve them,” said Jess.
“It did seem as though Miss Carrington was particularly harsh to-day,” murmured Eve.
“That’s so! She was as cross as two sticks,” declared Bobby.
“I believe something is troubling Miss Carrington’s mind,” said Nellie Agnew. “Have you noticed how thin she is getting – and that she starts nervously at every little thing?”
“She was scared when the thunder began – I was glad of it,” declared Bobby.
“Bad girl!” admonished Laura.
“It’s her conscience,” ventured Bobby.
Eve looked at her and shook her head.
“Oh, I’m not going to say why I think her conscience troubles her,” laughed Bobby.
Nellie was looking out of the window. “I say, girls! it’s breaking away, I do believe. And I think there’s a rainbow – yes! there’s a part of it.”
“It is a very small part you see, Nell,” laughed Eve.
“Let’s go up into the tower,” suggested Jess. “We can see it all from there.”
“Let’s,” agreed Bobby.
“That’s forbidden, you know,” said Laura, slowly.
“Oh, dear, Laura! Don’t be such a mollycoddle! Nobody’s really told us girls not to go into the tower. And we won’t do any damage – ”
“Maybe the door is locked,” observed Nellie, doubtfully.
But Bobby ran to the solid oak door and tried it. Although there was a key in the lock, the door opened at once to her turning of the knob.
“Come on!” exclaimed Bobby. “You’re a lot of scare-cats!”
“I admire your language, Bobs,” laughed Jess, following her.
The others went, too. Of course it was forbidden territory, and why shouldn’t they want to go? That was only human nature.
Besides, as they climbed the stairs, through the narrow windows they caught glimpses of the rainbow and the clouds, now breaking up into great beds of vari-colored mist.
“Hurry up!” cried Bobby, in the lead. “It’s just wonderful up here.”
They had left the door at the foot of the long, winding flight open. But scarcely had they disappeared when another figure appeared in the corridor which they had left. Purt Sweet, too, had been kept after school by Professor Dimp.
The youth saw the girls ascend the stair. The chance was too obvious to neglect. Although usually taking Bobby’s jokes and the others’ laughter good-naturedly, he had been spurred by Lily Pendleton’s remarks to a desire to “get square.”
And here was opportunity before him. Purt hurried forward, softly closed the door behind the girls, and turned the key in the lock.
CHAPTER XVI – FIVE IN A TOWER
But the girls climbing the stairs to see the rainbow had no idea that anybody below was playing a trick on them. After school was dismissed and the pupils left the building, and the teachers were gone, there was nobody but old John, the janitor, on the premises.
From any other floor he could be summoned by alarm bells. But there were no push-buttons in the tower. Therefore, when Purt Sweet turned the key, and stole away from the door at the bottom of the tower stairs, he had imprisoned the five girls as effectually as though they were in the tower of some ancient castle.
The five went up the stairs, however, without any suspicion that they were prisoners.
“Come on! come on!” urged Bobby, who mounted much quicker than the others. “Oh, this is glorious!”
They came out into a square room, through which the air blew freshly. The rain had evidently blown into the place during the shower, for it lay in puddles on the stone floor. The windows had no panes – indeed, they were merely narrow slits in the stone wall, like loop-holes in old fortresses.
“Dear me!” cried Jess. “How small the people look in the park – do you see? Just like ants.”
“Some of ’em are uncles, not ‘ants,’” laughed Bobby.
“Punning again!” exclaimed Nell. “You should be punished for that, Bobby.”
“Huh! that’s worse than mine,” declared Bobby.
“Look at that sky!” cried Laura.
“It is very beautiful,” agreed Eve, quietly.
“Look at those clouds yonder – a great, pink bed of down!” murmured Jess.
“And this arch of color,” said Laura, seriously. “I suppose that is just what Noah saw. How poetic to call it the Bow of Promise!”
The girls enjoyed looking at the wild colorings of the clouds and the beautiful bow. A half an hour elapsed before they proposed descending.
As they went down the stairs, Bobby still in the lead, she stopped suddenly with a little cry.
“What’s the matter now, Bobs?” demanded Jess.
“Oh! don’t you see it?” cried the other girl. “It’s a spider.”
“He won’t eat you,” said Jess. “Go on.”
“I know he won’t. I declare! he’s spinning a web.”
At that moment she came to the bottom of the stairway.
“Guess the draught pulled the door shut,” she exclaimed. “Hullo!”
She tried the knob, but the door would not open.
“Why, what’s the matter, Bobby?” cried Laura. “That is not a spring lock.”
“Huh! I guess not,” returned Bobby. “But somebody’s sprung it on us, just the same.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Nellie Agnew.
“The door’s locked,” declared Laura, reaching the bottom step and trying the knob herself.
“You bet it is,” said Bobby.
“It’s a joke!” gasped Eve.
“I should hope so,” returned Laura. “If they were in earnest it would be bad for us. John will leave the building soon, and how will we attract anybody to release us?”
“Oh, Laura!” cried Nell. “Nobody would be so mean.”
“It may be,” said Eve, thoughtfully, “that somebody went past, saw the door open, and closed and locked it with no idea that we were in the tower.”
“Well!” exclaimed Bobby, at that. “We’re in a nice fix – yes?”
“Who would have done it?” wailed Nellie Agnew.
“Maybe the janitor himself,” observed Laura, thoughtfully.
“My goodness! but you’re the cheerful girl,” returned Bobby. “Do you want to scare us to death right at the start, Mother Wit?”
“We might as well admit the seriousness of the situation,” said Laura. “I can’t imagine that anybody would shut us up here for a joke.”
“Some of the boys?” suggested Eve.
“That Short and Long is full of mischief,” added Nell.
“Chet would wring his neck for a thing like this,” declared Jess, with confidence.
“I don’t care who did it, or what it was done for,” said Bobby, finally. “The fact remains: The door is locked!”
“That is the truest thing you ever said, Bobby,” sighed Jess. “Come on back to the tower room. Do you suppose we can call loud enough to attract the attention of people on the street?”
“Not in a thousand years,” groaned Bobby.
“Oh, we won’t have to remain here that long,” said Laura, cheerfully.
“Hope not,” growled Bobby. “I’m getting hungry.”
“That won’t do you any good,” said Jess. “It’s useless to have an appetite when there is nothing in sight to satisfy it – just as useless as the holes in a porous plaster.”
“Who says the holes in a porous plaster are useless?” demanded Bobby, quickly. “They’re not.”
“What are they for, then?” asked Eve, mildly.
“Why, to let the pain out, of course,” declared Bobby, boldly.
“I wish there were some holes here that would let us out,” sighed Nellie Agnew.
“Don’t lose heart, Nell!” advised Laura. “There never was a situation that didn’t offer some release. We’ll find a way of escape.”
“Sure!” scoffed Bobby. “Any of us can crawl out through one of these slits in the wall.”
“And then what?” demanded Jess.
“Why, jump!” cried Bobby. “There’ll be nothing to stop you.”
“Don’t talk so recklessly,” said Mother Wit. “This is really a very serious problem. Mother will be very anxious about me if I don’t come home by six.”
“It’s an hour and a half to that yet,” said Nellie, looking at her watch.
Bobby was striving to squeeze through one of the open windows in the tower and look down upon the street. But it was nonsense to expect anybody on the walk to see them up there in the tower.
“And we could shriek our heads off without attracting a bit of attention,” declared Nellie, half crying. “What shall we do, Laura?”
“Keep cool,” advised Laura. “Why lose all our courage because we are locked into this tower? We will be found.”
“Maybe,” spoke Bobby, gloomily.
“You have become a regular croaker,” declared Jess. “I’m ashamed of you, Bobs.”
“That’s all right!” cried Bobby. “But hunger is an awful thing to suffer.”
“Ha! you make me laugh,” cried Eve. “Just think of me! If I don’t catch that 5:14 train I’ll not get supper till nine o’clock.”
“But what a supper it will be when you doget it!” exclaimed Bobby. “Oh, girls! when I was at Eve’s house last week they had thirteen vegetables for supper, besides two kinds of cold meat, and preserves and pickles. Talk about the poor farmer! Why the sort of supper Eve’s folks have every night would cost city folks two dollars a plate.”
“I am afraid you are stretching your imagination, Bobby,” laughed Eve.
“Never! They’ve got bins and bins of vegetables – and rows and rows of ham in the meat house – and bar’ls and bar’ls of salt pork! Listen here,” cried the whimsical Bobby, who had a doggerel rhyme for every occasion. “This is just what Eve Sitz hears whenever she goes down into the cellar in the winter. She can’t deny it!” And she sang:
“Potato gazed with frightened eyes,
King corn lent mournful ear,
The beet a blushing red did turn,
The celery blanched with fear,
The bean hid trembling in its pod,
The trees began to bark,
And on the beaten turnpike road
The stones for warmth did spark,
The brooklet babbled in its sleep
Because the night was cold;
The onion weeps within its bed
Because the year is old.”
“You are so ridiculous,” said Eve. “Nobody believes the rigamaroles you say.”
“All right!” returned Bobby, highly offended. “But you’re bound to believe one thing – that’s sure.”
“What is that?” queried Nellie.
“That we’re up in this tower, with the door locked – and I believe that John, the janitor, goes home about this time to supper!”
“Oh, oh!” cried Nellie. “Don’t say that. However will we get away?”
“Let’s bang on the door!” exclaimed Jess.
So they thumped upon the thick oak door – Bobby even kicked it viciously; and they shouted until they were hoarse. But nobody heard, and nobody came. The only person who knew they were locked into the tower was a mile away from Central High by that time – and, anyway, he dared not tell of what he had done, nor did he dare go back to release the girls from their imprisonment.
CHAPTER XVII – EVE TAKES A RISK
“Now, Nell!” declared Mother Wit, emphatically, “there isn’t the least use in your crying. Tears will not get us down from this tower.”
“You – you can be just as – as brave as you want to be,” sobbed Nellie Agnew. “I – want – to – go – home!”
“For goodness-gracious sake! Who doesn’t?” snapped Bobby. “But, just as Laura says, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth won’t help us the tiniest bit!”
“What will help us, I’d like to know?” grumbled Jess Morse.
“Put on your thinking cap, Mother Wit,” cried Bobby.
“Dear me!” said Eve, drawing in her head. “It is a long way from the ground – and that’s a fact.”
“It’s a good, long jump,” chuckled Bobby.
“Let’s write calls for help on pieces of paper and drop them down,” suggested Laura.
“With the wind blowing the way it is, the papers would fly up, instead of down,” scoffed her chum.
“We’ll weight ’em,” said Laura.
“It would be like throwing over a bottle into the sea, telling how we are cast away on a desert island,” said Bobby. “And this is worse than any desert island I ever heard about. Say, girls! how do you suppose our boots will taste?”
“What nonsense!” said Nellie, wiping her eyes. “We sha’n’t be hungry enough to begin on our shoes for a long time yet. But how scared our folks will be when we don’t come home to supper.”
“And the sun’s going down,” mourned Jess.
“Why, girls,” said Laura, thoughtfully, “it will be after dark before our folks begin to miss us much. And then they won’t see us up here, that’s sure!”
“I’m going to climb out of one of these windows and wave something,” cried her chum. “Surely somebody will see me.”
“And think you’re just playing up here,” commented Nellie, who was fast losing all hope.
“My goodness!” exclaimed Jess. “They must think, then, that I have selected a crazy place to play in,” and she removed her jacket and began to crawl out through one of the windows of the tower.
“Be careful, dear!” warned Laura.
“Yes, do look out where you step,” said Bobby, grabbing Jess’s skirt with a firm grip. “It’s a long way down to the street.”
“If we only had some means of making a light up here,” said Laura, in a worried tone. “Then, after dark, people would be attracted by our plight.”
“I haven’t a match – have you?” demanded Bobby.
“Of course not. Girls never do carry useful things in their pockets. Unless you do, Bobby.”
“I’ve got about everything in my pocket but a match,” declared the smaller girl.
“I have a good mind to drop this old coat,” called Jess, from outside.
“And it would catch on something half-way down the tower, perhaps, and then you’d never see it again,” Bobby said.
“Well, what shall we do?” demanded Jess, wriggling back into the tower room and dragging her jacket after her. “Nobody will even look up. I expect we’d look like pigeons up here to them.”
“Oh, dear!” gasped Bobby. “I do wish some pigeons would fly up here. They do sometimes, you know.”
“What good would they do us?” demanded Nellie.
“Couldn’t we kill and eat them?” replied Bobby. “Nothing like having bright ideas when you are cast away on a desert tower.”
“Your ideas may be bright enough,” laughed Laura; “but I wouldn’t care to eat pigeons raw.”
“You may be glad to before we get down from here,” returned Bobby, gloomily.
“Now that’s ridiculous,” said Mother Wit, briskly. “Don’t you begin to lose heart, Miss Hargrew.”
“I’ve as good a right as the next one,” growled Bobby.
“Speaking of pigeons,” observed Jess, ruminatively, “Chet’s carriers sometimes come up here when he lets them out. I’ve seen them.”
“My goodness me!” ejaculated Mother Wit. “Wouldn’t that be fine?”
“Wouldn’t what be fine?” queried Nellie, wiping her eyes.
“If some of Chet’s carriers would just fly up here. They know me. I’ve handled them lots of times. And we might send a note back telling Chet where we are.”
“And he’d find it tied under the pigeon’s wing in about a week,” scoffed Bobby.
“What are we going to do, girls?” demanded Nellie. “And it’s chilly up here, too.”
Jess pulled on her jacket again. “We can go down on the stairway, where it is warmer,” she said.
“It is very annoying,” wailed the doctor’s daughter, “to have you girls take the matter so calmly. Why, the whole town will be searching for us by midnight.”
“I hope so!” ejaculated Bobby.
“Let’s all shout together. Somebody ought to hear us,” Eve said.
“That is impossible,” objected Jess. “Sound doesn’t travel downward – much. Not when there is a sharp wind blowing, as it is now. It’s a good deal farther to the ground than it appears.”
“That’s like what our old girl, Nora, said about the distance to Liverpool. When she came to us, she came direct from the immigrant ship,” laughed Bobby. “And she was telling about the weary way across the ‘say.’ ‘How far is it, Nora?’ one of the children asked her.
“‘It’s fower thousan’ mile,’ declared Nora, ‘to Liverpool.’
“But the kiddies wouldn’t have that. They looked it up in the geography, and told her she was wrong – it was only three thousand.
“‘Sure, that’s flatways,’ says Nora. ‘But I been over it, an’ wid the ups an’ the downs, sure I know ’tis another thousand!”
“Dear me, Bobby,” complained Nellie. “I believe you’d joke if you were going to be hanged!”
“Do you think so?” asked Bobby, seriously. “Much obliged. That’s a good reputation to have, whether I deserve it or not.”
“Good for you, Bobs!” laughed Jess. “You keep still, old croaker!” she added, shaking Nellie Agnew. “Let’s look on the cheerful side of it. Every cloud has a silver lining.”
“If you can see any silver lining to this cloud, I’d like you to show it to me, Miss!” exclaimed Nellie, with some warmth.
Eve was going from window to window, thrusting her head and shoulders out of each, and examining the sides of the tower carefully. Laura asked what she was doing.
“Why, dear, on this side is the roof of the school building,” said Eve, thoughtfully. “It isn’t so far below us.”
“It’s much too far for us to jump,” returned Mother Wit.
“True,” said Eve, smiling. “But see here.”
“I can’t climb out of the same window you are at,” complained Laura.
“Go to the next one, then, and I’ll point it out to you.”
Laura did so. Sitting sideways on the sills the girls could thrust the upper part of their bodies out and obtain an unobstructed view of this entire wall of the tower.
“See that wire?” exclaimed Eve, eagerly.
Just below the level of the windows which pierced the upper story of the tower a heavy stay-wire was fastened to a staple set in the masonry. At some time the school building had been dressed with flags and bunting and this heavy wire had never been removed. It was fastened at the other end to a ring in the roof of the main building.
“I see it, Evangeline,” admitted Mother Wit, with something like fear in her voice. “You wouldn’t do it!”
“I believe I can,” declared the country girl.
“Why – why – it would take a trapeze performer!”
“Well, Mrs. Case has had us working on the ladders and the parallel bars until we ought to be pretty fair on a trapeze,” said Eve, laughing a little.
“Oh, Eve! I wouldn’t try it,” cried Laura.
“You see,” said the other, steadily, “if I can get out of the window here, and two of you can steady me, I can drop down upon that wire – ”
“But suppose you should fall to the roof!”
“I won’t fall. That is not what I am aiming to do, at least.”
“It is too reckless a thing to try,” cried Laura.
“Now, wait. Nobody will see us up here. If we have to stay all night some of the girls will be sick. You know that. Now, if I can once get to that wire, I know I can work my way down it to the roof.”
“You’ll slide – and cut your hands all to pieces.”
“No, I won’t. I’ve a pair of thick gloves in my pocket,” declared Eve. “I am going to try it, Mother Wit.”
“Oh, I don’t believe you had better!”
Eve slid back into the tower-room, Laura following her. The bigger girl slipped out of her coat and took off her hat immediately.
“Hullo!” said Bobby. “Don’t you want your slippers, too? You’re in for the night, are you?”
But Eve was finding her gloves and these she drew on. Even Nellie began to get interested then.
“What are you going to do now?” she cried.
Laura explained quickly. Nellie began to cry again, and even Bobby looked troubled.
“It isn’t worth the risk, is it?” she asked. “Somebody will find us some time.”
“That’s just it,” Eve returned. “We don’t know when that some time will be. I can slide down that wire, get in by the roof opening, and unlock this door that shuts us up here. Of course, the key will be in the lock. If it isn’t, and there is nobody in the building, I can telephone for help.”
“Say, that’s great!” spoke Jess. “If you can only do it safely, Eve.”
“Oh, I’ll do it,” declared the country girl, confidently, and the next moment she began climbing out through the window nearest to the wire.
Laura and Jess held her around the waist; then, as she slid out, farther and farther, they clung to her shoulders. But Eve had to leave her arms free and suddenly she panted:
“Let me go! I’ve got to drop and grab the wire. That’s the only way.”
Laura and her chum looked at each other in doubt and fear. It did seem as though, if they let go of the girl, she must fall to the foot of the tower!