She turned back again and wrote her address on a little piece of paper, which she gave to the child, and bade her take care of it and not let any one see it.
Gertie folded the piece of paper, and put it in her bosom.
She followed Miss Adrian downstairs, and watched her up the Dials as far as she could see her; and then she went back and showed Lion the piece of paper, and promised him some day they would go and call on the good, kind lady, and perhaps have tea with her.
From the moment Gertie had it in her power to render Ruth Adrian a service she longed for the opportunity. She almost prayed, that something might happen to Marston in her presence that very day, in order that she might show her good, kind friend how grateful she was, and how faithfully she could keep a promise.
CHAPTER XX.
GERTIE MAKES A DISCOVERY.
At the back of the room where the animals were kept was another little room, which Heckett himself occupied. Gertie’s room was upstairs, and she never went into her grandfather’s, having particularly been enjoined not to do so.
But on the day of Miss Adrian’s visit a peculiar thing happened. Lion, who had been wandering about after Miss Adrian left, went into her grandfather’s room, and was gone so long a time that Gertie called him. He didn’t answer, and Gertie, passing in, saw him biting at a piece of rag that seemed to stick between the boards. Gertie, terrified lest he should be doing some mischief for which her grandfather would beat him, ran in and drove him out.
Then she stooped down to pull the piece of rag up and see what it was.
She pulled hard, but it wouldn’t come out. She supposed it must have got trodden between the boards. She gave one more determined pull, and suddenly, to her intense astonishment, the floor yielded and she went down with a bump, pulling what at first she supposed to be a huge piece of the flooring up with her.
Her terror at what her grandfather would say when he discovered, as he must do, that she had been into his room, yielded to astonishment as it gradually dawned upon her that the flooring she had really pulled up was a trap-door.