“I don’t know,” Maida answered. “I haven’t the least idea. But if Billy makes it, you may be sure it will be wonderful.”
When Billy came back, they asked him a hundred questions. But they could not get a word out of him in regard to the new toy.
He appeared at the shop early the next morning with a suit-case full of bundles. Then followed doings that, for a long time, were a mystery to everybody. A crowd of excited children followed him about, asking him dozens of questions and chattering frantically among themselves.
First, he opened one of the bundles—out dropped eight little pulleys. Second, he went up into Maida’s bedroom and fastened one of the little pulleys on the sill outside her window. Third, he did the same thing in Rosie’s house, in Arthur’s and in Dicky’s. Fourth, he fastened four of the little pulleys at the playroom window in the Lathrop house.
“Oh, what is he doing?” “I can’t think of anything.” “Oh, I wish he’d tell us,” came from the children who watched these manœuvres from the street.
Fifth, Billy opened another bundle—this time, out came four coils of a thin rope.
“I know now,” Arthur called up to him, “but I won’t tell.”
Billy grinned.
And, sure enough, “You watch him,” was all Arthur would say to the entreaties of his friends.
Sixth, Billy ran a double line of rope between Maida’s and Laura’s window, a second between Rosie’s and Laura’s, a third between Arthur’s and Laura’s, a fourth between Dicky’s and Laura’s.