“Well, it isn’t considered proper here for a young lady to do anything on the street which would attract attention. You’d be a regular circus, climbing that scaffold. The street’d be jammed with people before you’d get halfway to the top.”

“I’ll promise not to give a free performance for the natives,” laughed Jo Ann. “But what’s to keep me from climbing up there when I wouldn’t have an audience? There are times, you know, when people sleep.”

“You couldn’t go out in the street at night—alone!” The very idea of such a thing was shocking to Florence. “That scaffold’s nothing but some rough poles fastened to the wall, and it’s so high it’d be dangerous—not at all like climbing a ladder.”

The car drew up before the house, and Florence and Peggy jumped out and hurried up the stairs without waiting for Felipe to open the door for them, but Jo Ann lingered a moment to thank him for granting her request. She knew he couldn’t understand a word she said, but from the broad grin which spread over his face she felt she had made her meaning clear to him.

The ride had meant much more to her than she had expected, since she had discovered a way of getting up on the roof. All she needed now was a length of rope so she could lower herself from the roof.

“It isn’t going to be hard to do,” she told herself as she went up the stairs. Of course, she would not do anything to disgrace Florence or Dr. Blackwell—they had been so kind to her—but give it up now? Never! Not with her goal almost in sight.

CHAPTER IV JO ANN’S SECRET QUEST

JO ANN’S SECRET QUEST

According to her promise to take the girls to the market with her, Florence called Peggy and Jo Ann the next morning as soon as she awoke. It was only half-past six, but the sun was already making a geometric pattern across the floor where it shone through the iron bars of the window.

Jo Ann was impatient to start the minute she had finished dressing. Yesterday she had looked forward to the trip only because it would be interesting, but now she was eager to find a store where she could buy the rope she needed for exploring the mysterious window. She knew that it would be difficult to make this purchase without Florence’s finding out about it, but if she could only find where to get the rope she could return later, alone, and buy it.

“Oh, hurry 

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