“No, but it isn’t your fault,” Peggy retorted.
“But, Jo, suppose someone should see you!” exclaimed Florence. “You must give up this foolish idea.”
“Would it be a disgrace if someone did see me?”
“Well, it isn’t considered proper here for a young lady to do anything on the street which would attract attention. You’d be a regular circus, climbing that scaffold. The street’d be jammed with people before you’d get halfway to the top.”
“I’ll promise not to give a free performance for the natives,” laughed Jo Ann. “But what’s to keep me from climbing up there when I wouldn’t have an audience? There are times, you know, when people sleep.”
“You couldn’t go out in the street at night—alone!” The very idea of such a thing was shocking to Florence. “That scaffold’s nothing but some rough poles fastened to the wall, and it’s so high it’d be dangerous—not at all like climbing a ladder.”
The car drew up before the house, and Florence and Peggy jumped out and hurried up the stairs without waiting for Felipe to open the door for them, but Jo Ann lingered a moment to thank him for granting her request. She knew he couldn’t understand a word she said, but from the broad grin which spread over his face she felt she had made her meaning clear to him.
The ride had meant much more to her than she had expected, since she had discovered a way of getting up on the roof. All she needed now was a length of rope so she could lower herself from the roof.
“It isn’t going to be hard to do,” she told herself as she went up the stairs. Of course, she would not do anything to disgrace Florence or Dr. Blackwell—they had been so kind to her—but give it up now? Never! Not with her goal almost in sight.