All through lunch and later that afternoon during the siesta hour these questions kept racing through her mind.
Just as they had done the day before, Florence and Peggy quickly succumbed to the heavy, drowsy stillness. But not Jo Ann. The harder she tried to sleep, the more wide awake she became.
Finally in desperation she got up and sat gazing out of the window. How could she stand this quiet and inaction so long? Glancing down at her watch, she realized it would be at least an hour before Florence and Peggy were awake.
“Even being outdoors in the hot sun’s better than sitting here doing nothing,” she told herself.
No sooner had this thought entered her mind than she decided to go outside and examine the scaffold on the building at the end of the block.
“It’ll take only a few minutes, and I’ll be back before the girls are awake,” she thought.
Quickly she rose and slipped noiselessly out of the room and past the sleeping Felipe at the head of the stairs. Once outside she hastened on around the corner and looked anxiously down the street to the farther end of the block to see if the scaffold were still there.
“Good! It’s there!” she exclaimed to herself the next moment.
Without a thought about the extreme heat she ran down the street to the corner. As she gazed up at the high, crude scaffold made of peeled poles fastened together, a slight tinge of fear passed over her. How high it looked! And what a blank wall it was fastened on! There wasn’t a sign of a window or opening—not even a ledge—to break the smooth, regular surface of the wall.
“That’s the crudest scaffold I’ve ever laid eyes on,” she thought, as she examined the hardwood poles which were fastened to the wall in several places by wooden pegs.