“It’s all very well to laugh, but how are we to get down to the laundry, I’d like to know; or the girls ever find out where we are?”
While all this talking had been going on, little Marie, the liveliest, slightest, most quick-witted girl in the school, had been doing a lot of thinking, and now turned to the others and said:
“Do you see that scrap of a window up there?”
“Yes, we see it, but it might as well be a rat-hole, for all the good it will do us; nothing but a rat could crawl through it!”
“Don’t be too sure,” answered Marie, with a knowing laugh. “I can get through a pretty small space when occasion demands, and, if I’m not much mistaken, the demand is very urgent just at this moment.”
“How under the sun can you reach it, even if you can get through it after you’ve reached it?”
“What good have you derived from your gymnastic training this winter, I’d like to know, if you have to ask me that?” demanded Marie.
The window was one of those odd little affairs one sometimes sees built in houses, perhaps simply to excite curiosity and make one wonder why they were ever built at all, for they do not seem to be of the slightest use. The one in question was situated high up in the closet, and had probably been put there for ventilating purposes, if anyone ever felt inclined to get a step-ladder and clamber up to open it. It was shaped like a segment of a circle, was only about eighteen inches high at the widest part, and fastened at the top with a bolt. Getting at it in broad daylight would not have been an easy matter, and now, with only the light of the moon shining through it, it seemed an impossibility.