Discovery was, of course, inevitable. One day Paula came into the dim and solemn Varick library where lessons were conducted with her big, wistful, gray eyes all wet and wincing, and her queer, sprightly little face like a mask of grief. Behind her came nurse with the expression of a hanging judge. The culprit, it appeared, had been found in the possession of contraband goods—to wit, a wad of much-chewed gum. Worse, it had been discovered in a most inappropriate place.
“I puh-hut it in my huh-huh-hair,” wept the sorrowful little Tiger, “and it stu-huh-huck.”
“She won't tell me where she got it,” said nurse.
“I did. I to-hold you an angel gave it to me,” declared the Tiger, clinging with pathetic resolution to her drama of the roof.
Nurse sniffed. Her theological imagination did not extend to heavenly visitors who dispensed that kind of manna. It was her opinion for what it was worth (sniff) that somebody had been throwing things (sniff) on the roof. Next time it might be (sniff) poison. Nurse did have an imagination of a kind.
It wasn't poison next time. It was a kite. Carlo had flown it from his own roof and had brought the twine down in his teeth, and had passed the ball through the netting to the Tiger. Oh, the thrill of ecstasy running up her arm, to spread and glow on live wires through every nerve, as she felt for the first time the tug and tremor of the beautiful, soaring, captive thing swaying far, far above her, higher than the highest roof-top she could see, higher than the biggest mountain in her geography, as high as the vanished cloud whence the beneficent angel of her happy drama had descended to brighten a hitherto correct and humdrum existence. Alas for angels' visits! From a bench in Our Square, nurse saw the aerial messenger and traced the string to the Varick roof. She hurried home and upstairs to the roof-top a good twenty minutes before her scheduled return.
But the scuttle stuck, and Carlo's quick ear, catching the sound, warned him. With a quick word to his playfellow, he dodged behind the chimney and began to climb the looped rope. There was a little space in which the climber always emerged above the chimney into the view of the child in the cage before he surmounted the coping of the upper roof. Paula's eyes were fixed upon this point. The nurse's glance followed hers. Carlo appeared, climbing in hot haste. He missed one of the loops. There was a muffled cry. His body turned, swayed, and plunged down into the fifty-foot abyss between the two buildings. The nurse, scared out of her senses, rushed down the scuttle-way and hid in her room, accusing herself of being an involuntary murderess, while poor Paula tore and battered with her tender fingers at the cruel iron meshes in a passion of grief and despair, long after nurse had disappeared.