Part 30 (1/2)
CHAPTER XX
JANE PLAYS EAVESDROPPER
Two hours later the Meadow-Brook Girls were startled to hear a voice directly over their heads call:
”Girls, girls.”
”Who is it?” asked Miss Elting cautiously.
”It's I. I'm up here, right where we heard George Baker talking this morning.”
”You nearly thcared me to death!” gasped Tommy.
”Speak more quietly, please,” warned Harriet. ”Jane, I wish you would come up here. No; I'm not going to take you far. I want you within reach of the boat.”
”Do you see anything of the boys, Harriet?” asked Miss Elting.
”No, but I hear them occasionally. They are quite a distance ahead, traveling fast, and ought to be back long before dark.”
Jane lost no time in hurrying to the lower end of the creek in order to join her friend. Harriet lay on the rocks, at a point where she could not see the water, and there Jane joined her.
”What I want you to do,” Harriet explained in whispers, at the same time on the alert for sound or sign of the boys, ”is to stay here, or not far from here, so that you can warn the girls in case I signal by making a cawing noise like a crow. I don't want the girls to make too much noise, for it would spoil our fun if the boys should discover our hiding place.”
”But how am I going to get back if I have to do so in a hurry?”
”Can you go down a rope?”
”Show me the rope that I can't go down,” boasted Jane.
”How about this one?” smiled Harriet, producing a coil of quarter inch manila rope.
”Well, it's small, but I'll try it. Where do you wish me to climb?”
”I'll show you. Take hold of my feet and don't you dare let go. I surely shall break my neck if you do.” Harriet crawled over the edge, Jane grasping her by the ankles to prevent her from falling. Then Harriet tied one end of the rope to a root of a tree that stood on the brink.
”Look out below!” she warned, at the same time dropping the coil through the foliage and shaking the rope until the coil finally dropped into the stream. ”Please draw the rope up to the boat,” she called. ”That's it.
Now pull me back, Jane.”
Jane McCarthy did so with some a.s.sistance from Harriet, who clawed at the roots of the tree and pushed with her hands until she finally got to the top once more. Reaching there she got up and surveyed the work with approval.
”Can you see the rope, Jane?”
Miss McCarthy shook her head.
”If you have to go down it be careful that you don't fall before you get to the rope. Now do you understand?”
”Do I? This is going to be great fun. Won't the boys be surprised when we play our great trick on them?”
”Provided they do not surprise us first,” answered Harriet.