“Yes, yes, she nods her head. She bids us fear nothing. Now she has passed through the door. Come, Margery, come, or we shall lose her.”
The two little mites crept across the room and Willie unlocked the door. The mother stood at the head of the stair beckoning them onwards. Step by step they followed her down into the empty kitchen. The woman seemed to have gone out. All was still in the house. The phantom still beckoned them on.
“We are to go out.”
“Oh, Willie, we have no hats.”
“We must follow, Madge. She is smiling and waving.”
“Father will kill us for this.”
“She shakes her head. She says we are to fear nothing. Come!”
They threw open the door and were in the street. Down the deserted court they followed the gleaming, gracious presence, and through a tangle of low streets, and so out into the crowded rush of Tottenham Court Road. Once or twice amid all that blind torrent of humanity, some man or woman, blessed with the precious gift of discernment, would start and stare as they were aware of an angel presence and of two little white-faced children who followed behind, the boy with fixed, absorbed gaze, the girl glancing ever in terror over her shoulder. Down the long street they passed, then again amid the humbler dwellings, and so at last to a quiet drab line of brick houses. On the step of one the spirit had halted.
“We are to knock,” said Willie.
“Oh, Willie, what shall we say? We don’t know them.”