“Let’s go straight up and find it!” said Nora. “Come on! Oh, do come on!”
They all fled upstairs, tumbling over the steps in their haste. They must find that secret door in the chimney. Quick! Quick!
Another Secret Passage!
They all rushed into Jack’s bedroom at the top of the tower - but at the first look round Peggy gave a cry. “What sillies we are! There’s no fireplace here!”
“Goodness - of course not,” said Jack in dismay. “I’d completely forgotten that. But the map quite clearly shows that the passage starts somewhere in the chimney.”
“Our room below has a big stone fireplace!” cried Nora. “It must be there that the passage starts. Hurry!”
Down they tore to Nora’s room, where there was certainly a big, old-fashioned stone fireplace. Jack looked up it.
“Get me a stool or something,” he said. “I can stand on that and grope about.”
So, with the girls jigging impatiently about below, Jack stood on a stool and groped about in the dirty old chimney. At one side he felt what seemed to him to be narrow steps cut in the chimney. He told Miss Dimmy, looking down at her as black as a little sweep!
“Yes, that’s right, there would be steps there,” said Dimmy. “In the olden days small boys were sent up to sweep these big chimneys and sometimes steps were cut to help them. Can you get up them, Jack?”