CHAPTER XXVI
AN ADVENTURE
"Where is Lois?" Laura flitted from one group of people to another, growing anxious in her continued failure to get any information.
"She was naughty, and she's gone!" screamed Claude and Nettie, who came rushing hand in hand out the front door.
"Where did she go?"
"Over the roof."
Laura grew pale.
"The roof? Whereabouts? Where is she, I say? Where were you?" She took hold of their shoulders as if to shake the answers out of them.
Alas, when they spoke her worst fears were confirmed! The children had climbed the four flights of steps to the tower room, where Lois had crawled out upon the roof; they called to her and in trying to turn she had slipped out of sight over the edge.
Laura ran moaning toward the foot of the tower, dreading to find a little crushed body lying there inert, but no! the crowd was gazing upward horror-stricken, and she caught a glimpse of a white object clinging to a swinging ladder high up in the air.