Away up in that new part of the city, a girl of about Jim’s age, and a boy who may have been a little older but was no taller, were standing in front of another kind of stone wall and were talking about it.
This wall was about twelve feet high and was roughly made, with a rugged face, very different from the smooth finish of the barrier around the parade-ground. In fact it was nothing at all but the side of a new street. An old road which once had run along there had been contented to go down into a hollow and come up again on the higher ground beyond. Now, however, that the city had spread out and taken in all that land, it had been best to make a level. All high places were cut down and across all low places the streets were carried on “viaducts.” These left the ground on either side of such a street away down below it, looking more of a hollow than ever.
One of these streets was a broad avenue, promising to be good looking after it was finished, but very ugly now. It was so much wider than the old road it was taking the place of that it cut off an old front yard entirely, and the house there which had been a number of feet from its old front gate was now almost exactly on a line with the stone wall at the edge of the avenue. That was the reason why the girl looked hard at the wall and at the house and then turned to the boy, exclaiming:
“Why, Rodney Nelson! Your folks are just walled in! How on earth are you going to get out?”
It looked like it, for the side streets, crossing the avenue at the ends of the square, were built up in the same way and on the fourth side, to which their backs were turned, were the backs of a solid row of buildings, fronting upon another avenue.
“You can’t get over that wall,” said Rodney. “Billy’s tried it, everywhere, and he can climb anything that isn’t straight up and down.”
He seemed to be pretty cheerful about it, nevertheless, whoever Billy might be.
“Tell you what,” she said, “you can come across and get out through our house and the shop, till you can put up some stairs, or a ladder.”
“Guess we’ll have to,” replied Rodney, “but Billy’s got to stay at home, now. They finished the last of that wall, this morning. Come on upstairs and see how mother’s going to get in, this evening.”
In half a minute more they were up in the room over the parlor and she at once remarked: