“Señor—oh, señor!”
It was little Carmencita who called aloud, and looking up I discovered that both she and Hildegarde were in the doorway, surveying all that went on with eager curiosity.
Oh! here was an interpreter, and my misery gave promise of being ended.
“What does he say?” I demanded, furious to think of the time wasted.
“The ladder is behind the toolhouse,” she said, in a mixture of Spanish and English.
“Good! good! Robbins, lay hold on it. We may be happy yet.”
I withdrew my hand from the frightened chap, who straightway fell to groaning his prayers as though desirous of preparing himself for being speedily ushered into eternity.
I cared no longer for his woes—there was good Robbins buckling under the weight of the ladder, which he had found just as the girl had said.
I was more than once inclined to believe her bright eyes had discovered it sticking out, and that the gardener had not, after all, understood my elegant Spanish phraseology, bad luck to him!
Robbins quickly had the ladder slanting up to the roof of the toolhouse—it was long enough to extend a foot above the wall, a fact I noted with extreme satisfaction, for I had to think of getting down as well as up.