“O! I see! your mother’ll climb in at the second story windows.”
“She won’t have to climb,” said Rodney. “Look here.”
The Nelson house was old, but it was not large. That second story had but four rooms, two of them of good size, two of them, at each end of its entry, quite small. The large front room, however, had an ample bay window that jutted out, now, almost over the edge of the wall. That was not the window Rodney went to, but the one in the little room on the left, and he had it open in a twinkling.
“There, Millie,” he said, “I can nail down some pieces of board and mother can step right in. She won’t need any ladder. We can change things around, too, and bring the parlor up here.”
“That’ll do,” said Millie, “but it isn’t as good as a door. I wouldn’t want to live in a house that’s upside down, anyway. That avenue won’t be anything but mud, till they pave it and put in the sidewalks. I’m glad we can’t be walled in or lose our doors and windows.”
“It changes everything for us,” said Rodney. “I don’t quite know what to make of it, yet, but I’ve loads of work to do, all day, to have things right when mother comes home.”
“So have I!” exclaimed Millie, and away she went, downstairs, to go home across lots, while he stepped out of the window and turned to stare, in a puzzled way, at all of his house that stuck up above the new avenue. It certainly was not the same house it had been, and all the ground around it was walled in, but, after all, Rodney was the same boy.
How about all those other boys, over on Randall’s Island? They too were walled in, but were they not the same boys? Did the house they were in change them?
At all events, like Rodney, they had “loads of work to do,” all day, until supper time. Then indeed there was a curious kind of coming in to supper, for this, too, was part of their schooling and their discipline.
All over the enclosure and in every workshop, could be heard the tap of a drum. Everywhere, work stopped. There were minutes of preparation and of “putting away things.” Then another drum-tap was heard, and from all directions compact and orderly squads of young fellows began to march toward the great dining-room, supper-room, of the House. Every boy was “tallied,” on leaving his place of work, and he was counted again as he went in to supper. Every sentry on duty; every boy in the “office”; promoted there for good behavior; every inmate of the House was at that hour reported and the Superintendent knew where he was and what he was doing.