“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!”