“Why, come up a ladder, of course,” I said.
“But how is he to get one there?” said Clara. “Bring some bricklayers and scaffold poles, and have a scaffold made on purpose?”
“Why, a rope ladder, goosey,” I said. “Don’t you see?”
But Clara said she could not see, and that she believed that, excepting in ships, there were no such things as rope ladders, and all those that you read of in books were manufactured in people’s brains, and never helped anybody yet up to a window; while as to ladies eloping down them, that was all nonsense, for she did not think the woman was living who could get either up or down one of the swingle-swangle things. And then she said that it would not be safe; but I knew better, and told her so, for I was not going to have my plan set aside for a trifle. So then I set to and wrote a letter to Achille.
Since Clara had laughed so terribly, I had not liked to send money in the notes by her; and poor Achille had sent me such a despairing note, telling me how that he must see me—one of the most grievous, broken-hearted notes possible. I declare I don’t know what he did not say he would do if he could not see me soon.
Chapter Fourteen.
Memory the Fourteenth—Anticipated Joys.
I wrote and told Achille all my plans, using the top of the drawers for a writing desk, and letting Patty Smith think that I was doing an exercise; for I was so horribly deceitful, writing upon exercise paper, and referring now and then to dictionary and grammar, as if for different words. I told him he was to get hooks made that would fit over the inside of the window-sill, and he was to buy a rope ladder, and I would let down a string and draw it up, and hook it on, when he could easily run up and stand upon the great, wide ledge beneath the second floor windows—a large, ornamental cornice that ran nearly round the house—and there stop and talk to me whenever it was a dark night.