“Now, Dick, you have a turn.” Dories held the flashlight toward him, but he shook his head. “No, Gib first.”
The red-headed boy grinned gleefully. “I’ll choose a hard place. I reckon ol’ Colonel Wadbury hid that thar deed somewhar’s up in the attic under the roof.” Dories looked dismayed. “O, Gib, don’t choose there, for we girls couldn’t climb up among the rafters.” But Nann put in: “Of course, dear, Gib may choose the loft if he wishes. But how would you get there?”
Gib had been flashing the light along the cracked, tipped ceiling of the room. Suddenly his freckled face brightened. “Come on out agin.” He sprang for the low opening as he spoke. Then, when they were outside, he pointed to the spot where the roof was lowest. “Yo’ gals stay here whar the punt is,” he advised, “while me ’n’ Dick shinny up to whar the chimney’s broke off. Bet yo’ we kin git into the garrit from thar. Bet yo’ we kin.”
Dick was gazing at the roof appraisingly. “O, I guess it’s safe enough,” he answered the anxious expression he saw in the face of the older girl. “If our weight is too much, the roof will sag more and close up our entrance perhaps, but we can slide down without being hurt, I am sure of that.”
The girls sat in the punt to await the return of the boys, who, after a few moments’ scrambling up the sloping roof, actually disappeared into what must have once been an attic.
“I never was so interested or excited in all my life,” Nann told her friend. “I do hope we will find that deed today, for tomorrow will be Sunday, and I feel that we ought to remain with your Aunt Jane and put things in readiness for our departure on Monday.”
“Yes, so do I.” Dories glanced up at the roof, but as the boys were not to be seen, she continued: “I am interested in finding the deed, of course, but I just can’t keep my thoughts from wandering. I am so glad that Mother will not have to keep on sewing. She has been so wonderful taking care of Peter and me the way she has ever since that long ago day when father died.” Then she sighed. “Of course I wish she hadn’t been too proud to accept help from Aunt Jane.” But almost at once she contradicted with, “In one way, though, I don’t, for if I had lived in Boston all these years, I would never have known you. But now that you are going to live in Boston, how I do wish that Mother and Peter and I were to live there also.”
“Maybe you will,” Nann began, but Dories shook her head. “I don’t believe Mother would want to leave her old home. It isn’t much of a place, but she and Father went there when they were married, and we children were born there.” Then, excitedly pointing to the roof, Dories exclaimed: “Here come the boys, and they have a packet of papers, haven’t they?”
Nann stepped out of the punt to the mound as she called, “O, boys, have you found the deed?”
“We don’t know yet,” Dick replied, but the girls could see by his glowing expression that he believed that they had.