The Girls of Central High on Track and Field Part 20

"We'll weight 'em," said Laura.

"It would be like throwing over a bottle into the sea, telling how we are cast away on a desert island," said Bobby. "And this is worse than any desert island I ever heard about. Say, girls! how do you suppose our boots will taste?"

"What nonsense!" said Nellie, wiping her eyes. "We sha'n't be hungry enough to begin on our shoes for a long time yet. But how scared our folks will be when we don't come home to supper."

"And the sun's going down," mourned Jess.

"Why, girls," said Laura, thoughtfully, "it will be after dark before our folks begin to miss us much. And then they won't see us up here, that's sure!"

"I'm going to climb out of one of these windows and wave something,"

cried her chum. "Surely somebody will see me."

"And think you're just playing up here," commented Nellie, who was fast losing all hope.

"My goodness!" exclaimed Jess. "They must think, then, that I have selected a crazy place to play in," and she removed her jacket and began to crawl out through one of the windows of the tower.

"Be careful, dear!" warned Laura.

"Yes, do look out where you step," said Bobby, grabbing Jess's skirt with a firm grip. "It's a long way down to the street."

"If we only had some means of making a light up here," said Laura, in a worried tone. "Then, after dark, people _would_ be attracted by our plight."

"I haven't a match--have you?" demanded Bobby.

"Of course not. Girls never do carry useful things in their pockets.

Unless _you_ do, Bobby."

"I've got about everything in my pocket but a match," declared the smaller girl.

"I have a good mind to drop this old coat," called Jess, from outside.

"And it would catch on something half-way down the tower, perhaps, and then you'd never see it again," Bobby said.

"Well, what _shall_ we do?" demanded Jess, wriggling back into the tower room and dragging her jacket after her. "n.o.body will even look up. I expect we'd look like pigeons up here to them."

"Oh, dear!" gasped Bobby. "I do wish some pigeons _would_ fly up here.

They do sometimes, you know."

"What good would they do us?" demanded Nellie.

"Couldn't we kill and eat them?" replied Bobby. "Nothing like having bright ideas when you are cast away on a desert tower."

"Your ideas may be bright enough," laughed Laura; "but I wouldn't care to eat pigeons raw."

"You may be glad to before we get down from here," returned Bobby, gloomily.

"Now that's ridiculous," said Mother Wit, briskly. "Don't _you_ begin to lose heart, Miss Hargrew."

"I've as good a right as the next one," growled Bobby.

"Speaking of pigeons," observed Jess, ruminatively, "Chet's carriers sometimes come up here when he lets them out. I've seen them."

"My goodness me!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mother Wit. "Wouldn't that be fine?"

"Wouldn't what be fine?" queried Nellie, wiping her eyes.

"If some of Chet's carriers would just fly up here. They know me. I've handled them lots of times. And we might send a note back telling Chet where we are."

"And he'd find it tied under the pigeon's wing in about a week," scoffed Bobby.

"What _are_ we going to do, girls?" demanded Nellie. "And it's chilly up here, too."

Jess pulled on her jacket again. "We can go down on the stairway, where it is warmer," she said.

"It is very annoying," wailed the doctor's daughter, "to have you girls take the matter so calmly. Why, the whole town will be searching for us by midnight."

"I hope so!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bobby.

"Let's all shout together. Somebody ought to hear us," Eve said.

"That is impossible," objected Jess. "Sound doesn't travel downward--much. Not when there is a sharp wind blowing, as it is now.

It's a good deal farther to the ground than it appears."

"That's like what our old girl, Nora, said about the distance to Liverpool. When she came to us, she came direct from the immigrant ship," laughed Bobby. "And she was telling about the weary way across the 'say.' 'How far is it, Nora?' one of the children asked her.

"'It's fower thousan' mile,' declared Nora, 'to Liverpool.'

"But the kiddies wouldn't have that. They looked it up in the geography, and told her she was wrong--it was only three thousand.

"'Sure, that's flatways,' says Nora. 'But I been over it, an' wid the ups an' the downs, sure I _know_ 'tis another thousand!"

"Dear me, Bobby," complained Nellie. "I believe you'd joke if you were going to be hanged!"

"Do you think so?" asked Bobby, seriously. "Much obliged. That's a good reputation to have, whether I deserve it or not."

"Good for you, Bobs!" laughed Jess. "You keep still, old croaker!" she added, shaking Nellie Agnew. "Let's look on the cheerful side of it.

Every cloud has a silver lining."

"If you can see any silver lining to _this_ cloud, I'd like you to show it to me, Miss!" exclaimed Nellie, with some warmth.

Eve was going from window to window, thrusting her head and shoulders out of each, and examining the sides of the tower carefully. Laura asked what she was doing.

"Why, dear, on this side is the roof of the school building," said Eve, thoughtfully. "It isn't so far below us."

"It's much too far for us to jump," returned Mother Wit.

"True," said Eve, smiling. "But see here."

"I can't climb out of the same window you are at," complained Laura.