But he would better finish his hasty survey. He looked up the staircase. There might be an invalid or helpless occupant still to be consulted before he boldly took possession of the premises in the license of Gerald’s and his own plight; to use them until those absent should suddenly appear. He mounted the stairs.
“Good, large, comfortable rooms, with more old-fashioned furniture, not used very much,” he soliloquized, passing from one chamber to another of the second story. Every thing was clean, cheerful, and in stiff and even polished order except Mr. and Mrs. Obed Probasco’s own big room, evidently in too much use for apple-pie order to be preserved. One or two doors up-stairs were locked. It was plain that to the Probascos a house was one thing, living in it was another. A huge attic, that startled Philip by the bewildering array of odds and ends crowded in it, took up the space immediately under the roof.
He descended quickly to the lower hall again, on his way back to Gerald. His head was giddy; he began to feel a great faintness, but the main question of their finding shelter and food was settled.
“I will fetch Gerald, ransack for what eatables there must be, get him to bed, and then we’ll await developments and the showing up of these Probascos—how many or what sort they be. We seem to be more than ever castaways, but castaways under such a state of things as never I have read about.”
The dog, with a hunger very evident to him, tried to bar his way by leaping up on him beseechingly as he hurried into the kitchen. Ah! the first objects that might well have met his eye he had not noticed before—three loaves of tempting bread set on the high shelves, a pound-cake, and a cooked ham, partly cut. But he would not stretch his hand toward them till Gerald was in that room to eat with him. He left the house and hastened back to the gate, giving loud whistle-calls for Gerald’s encouragement.
He found the boy just entering the yard, impatient, faint, and anxious.
“I was afraid something had happened,” he exclaimed. “Well? Will they take us in? What kind of people are they, Philip?”
“I don’t know, Gerald. The fact is, I can find plenty of house and food and beds, but not a single soul to hear us say, ‘By your leave,’ if we help ourselves. So I’ve made up my mind we must just do that—help ourselves.”
“What do you mean?” asked Gerald in distressed surprise.
Touchtone made his explanation as brief and cheering as he could. And really, after all, there was small wrong in this self-succoring, without the license or help of these people so unaccountably absent, who, in all probability, were to be the kind of hosts likely to rejoice that two such unfortunates should take matters in their own hands.