“If yours won’t spring open, mine will,” he said. “Just you wait, anyhow, till I come and let you out.”
They were excited enough about it, but each boy of them seemed to feel, as strongly as he did, that it would be doing the hundreds of others hurt instead of good to let them out of that place.
The Superintendent and the Managers might even have been gratified if they could have known how clear was the opinion expressed that they were “doing first-rate” with the youngsters under their charge.
That was not the only matter that Jim had to study, during that very long day. He believed that he knew every stone in the parade-ground wall, already, and now he found himself studying the buildings also, and wondering how he should ever manage to lead a squad of escaping boys right through them. Getting out of a bedroom was only a kind of beginning, after all, and Jim’s heart sank within him, for he thought:
“They are stronger than the wall is, and beyond them is the East River.—I don’t care! It’s just the awfullest kind of thing to do, but I’m going to do it, somehow!”
No point or place in all the barriers of the House of Refuge seemed to promise a door through which he could get out.
That very evening, over in their house, Rodney and his mother were also discussing the door question, but they were also wondering over the fact that Billy the goat had evidently found one, for that remarkable animal was again missing.
“He can stay outside, too,” said Rodney, “if we’re going to have a garden.”
“He’d eat up everything we planted,” remarked Mrs. Nelson. “We’ve three whole lots of our own, and we can garden all the rest till they build on them. That won’t be for ever so long.”
“It’s about all I can do,” said Rodney, and he seemed to have a hopeless feeling about it and he went to bed thinking: