Janet | Page 9

sign of life anywhere about it or in the many ramshackle farm buildings that evidently belonged to it. All the windows were boarded up but one, a very small one that led into the cellar. Janet pushed it open gently and slid down as far as she could and then dropped. It was very dark and very musty. She groped her way to the rickety stairs as quickly as she could. The door at the top opened with a groan as she pushed, and she was in a long, low-ceilinged kitchen. Rain had come down through the leaky roof and rusted the stove, the furniture was covered with dust, and a forlorn china cup with its handle broken lay dejectedly on one corner of the table.
Janet glanced hurriedly about her, to make sure that no one had been in the room since she had, and then hurried into the front hall. Some heavy pieces of furniture were partly covered by torn and dirty sheets; they looked like ghosts in the dim light that filtered in through the boarded windows. Janet, in spite of the many times that she had passed them, could not repress a shiver. and she gave a sigh of relief as she closed the door of another room behind her. She was in her kingdom at last, and she surveyed it with sparkling eyes. It was a long room with a low ceiling that ran the length of the house. In the center along one side was a huge fireplace. Each one of the six windows had a broad window seat. There was very little furniture, and none of it was covered by dust sheets. In consequence, the stuffing was coming out of several of the chairs and a puddle of water had sopped into the big horsehair sofa. The only human looking thing was a pair of gloves on one end of the table. They were badly mildewed and they looked very limp and lifeless, but they had belonged to some one of the mysterious owners of the house, and Janet always nodded to them with mock respect. It was the books that made the room a kingdom. Rows and rows of them lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Some were damp and moldy but they were all readable, and that was all that mattered to Janet, though she sometimes cried over a broken binding, and patted it quite as she would have stroked a hurt puppy.
"Well, my darlings, I have come back to you," she said as she slipped to her knees before a corner bookcase, "and I want you to be very kind to me and take me far, far away to --" She let her hand wander over the backs of the books until it rested on one, "Greece," she finished, as she read the title.
She made herself as comfortable as possible in one o f the window seats, and for an hour she was so engrossed in the old fables and the stirring tales of the gods that she forgot the time. It was only when the light through the chinks of the boarding grew too dim to see that she realized with a start that it was getting late.
"And I never looked up about Roy's paw in that animal book!" she exclaimed. Had Mrs. Page heard her, she might have understood where she had learned so much about the care of dogs.
Janet hurriedly put her book back and went to the bookcase across the room to find what she wanted.
"That's funny," she said. "I thought I left it -- why, I did; here's the place where it belongs." An empty hole on the bottom shelf confronted her, and looked exactly as if the smiling row had lost a tooth.
Without knowing exactly why, Janet was frightened. She had looked upon this room as so particularly hers for so long that there was something uncanny in the thought that someone else had dared to trespass.
"Perhaps I put it back somewhere else." She tried to comfort herself with this thought, but she could not get rid of the queer feeling that some other hands were touching her loves, and that other eyes were seeing into her enchanted pages,
She puzzled over it as she rowed home, but it was impossible to come to any conclusion.
Martha was waiting for her in the hall; her face was even whiter than it had been earlier in the day."Miss Janet, you're back, thank goodness; your grandmother has been calling for you all afternoon."
"When did Mrs. Todd leave?" Janet enquired.
"She hasn't left at all," Martha gasped. "She's sat in there the whole blessed day. Only an hour ago she came into my kitchen as smiling as you please, and said that she and Mrs.. Page would have a cup