had said they were, but at last she put her hand on the handle of one
of them and turned it. She was almost frightened for a moment when she
felt that it turned without difficulty and that when she pushed upon
the door itself it slowly and heavily opened. It was a massive door and
opened into a big bedroom. There were embroidered hangings on the wall,
and inlaid furniture such as she had seen in India stood about the
room. A broad window with leaded panes looked out upon the moor; and
over the mantel was another portrait of the stiff, plain little girl
who seemed to stare at her more curiously than ever.
Perhaps she slept here once, said Mary. She stares at me so that she
makes me feel queer.
After that she opened more doors and more. She saw so many rooms that
she became quite tired and began to think that there must be a hundred,
though she had not counted them. In all of them there were old pictures
or old tapestries with strange scenes worked on them. There were
curious pieces of furniture and curious ornaments in nearly all of
them.
In one room, which looked like a lady s sitting-room, the hangings were
all embroidered velvet, and in a cabinet were about a hundred little
elephants made of ivory. They were of different sizes, and some had
their mahouts or palanquins on their backs. Some were much bigger than
the others and some were so tiny that they seemed only babies. Mary had
seen carved ivory in India and she knew all about elephants. She opened
the door of the cabinet and stood on a footstool and played with these
for quite a long time. When she got tired she set the elephants in
order and shut the door of the cabinet.
In all her wanderings through the long corridors and the empty rooms,
she had seen nothing alive; but in this room she saw something. Just
after she had closed the cabinet door she heard a tiny rustling sound.
It made her jump and look around at the sofa by the fireplace, from
which it seemed to come. In the corner of the sofa there was a cushion,
and in the velvet which covered it there was a hole, and out of the
hole peeped a tiny head with a pair of frightened eyes in it.
Mary crept softly across the room to look. The bright eyes belonged to
a little gray mouse, and the mouse had eaten a hole into the cushion
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