"It's in my pocket. But it mystifies me, what you want there."
"I want to look out of all the windows, auntie, to begin with."
Aunt Faith's mystification was not lessened.
The front door opened on a small, square hall, with doors to right and left. The room on the left, spite of the bare floor and fireless hearth, was warm with the spring sunshine that came pouring in at the south windows. Beyond this, embracing the corner of the house rectangularly, projected an equally sunny and cheery kitchen; at the right of which, communicating with both apartments, was divided off a tiny tea and breakfast room. So Faith decided, though it had very likely been a bedroom.
From the entrance hall at the right opened a room larger than either of the others—so large that the floor above afforded two bedrooms over it—and having, besides its windows south and east, a door in the farther corner beyond the chimney, that gave out directly upon the grassy slope, and looked up the path among the trees that crossed the ridge.
Faith drew the bolt and opened it, expecting to find a closet or a passage somewhither. She fairly started back with surprise and delight. And then seated herself plump upon the threshold, and went into a midsummer dream.
"Oh, auntie!" she cried, at her waking, presently, "was ever anything so perfect? To think of being let out so! Right from a regular, proper parlor, into the woods!"
"Do you mean to go upstairs?" inquired Miss Henderson, with a vague amaze in her look that seemed to question whether her niece had not possibly been "let out" from her "regular and proper" wits!
Whereupon Faith scrambled up from her seat upon the sill, and hurried off to investigate above.
Miss Henderson closed the door, pushed the bolt, and followed quietly after.