“Help us! Save us!” screamed the woman.
“We’re coming! Don’t jump!” warned Jerry.
Being tall and athletic, he had managed, with the aid of a drain pipe and clinging vine, to scramble up to the flat roof of the one-story extension before the ladder was brought up. Ned could do the same, but Bob was too fat. He had to ascend by the ladder. However, after he was on the roof, he helped pull the ladder up so that it could be raised to the window.
The house appeared to be on fire in the vicinity of the kitchen, and the boys guessed that the woman and girls had been cut off from the front and back stairs.
While the motor engine was chugging its way nearer and while friends and neighbors were gathering to do what they could, the ladder, now on the roof of the extension, was raised to the window at which the three stood frantically calling.
“We’ll get you down in a minute!” shouted Jerry encouragingly, as he ran up the ladder, which was steadied at its foot by Ned and Bob. “Come on!” he cried to the youngest girl, who was crying.
“I—I’m afraid!” she sobbed, leaning out of the window.
“You needn’t be,” Jerry assured her. “I won’t let you fall.”
“Go on with him, Mary!” urged her mother. “Then take Helen next. And there’s a lame man in here.”