“You cannot know that! You may fall and break your leg, or find something there—Oh, I wish you will not go!”
He grinned at her. “Don’t I hope I may find something, that’s all! If there is a skull, I will fetch it up to you!”
“Do not dare do anything of the sort!” she said, shuddering. “If you are set on going down, only let me call Barrow to go with you!”
“Barrow! No, I thank you! I don’t mean to tell him of this!” said Nicky, disappearing through the gap.
Elinor waited at the top, quite sick with apprehension and calling from time to time to know if he were still safe. He assured her that he was and that there was light enough penetrating through the opening for him to see his way. She retired to a chair and sank into it to await events. It seemed an age before he reappeared, but he did so at last, and stepped into the room, brushing the dust from his clothes. “It is the most famous thing!” he informed her. “It is just as I supposed! The stair goes down the chimney stack—it is the bakehouse chimney, you know. And there is a door at the bottom, only it is so covered over with creepers you would never see it unless you searched particularly for it! I wonder how they hid it in the old days.”
“I wonder,” said Elinor, gazing at him in a fascinated way. “I suppose there is no difficulty in opening the door from outside?”
“Oh, not the least in the world! There is a latch. You have only to part the creepers and you may see it as plain as anything! Cousin Elinor, I was never more pleased with anything in my life! It is first-rate! Why, we have nothing like this up at the Hall!”
“How wretched for you!” said Elinor.
“Well, I do think it is unfair that a paltry fellow like Eustace should have such a bang-up thing, when I dare say he never made the least use of it! Only think what Harry and I could have done if we had had such a passage up at the Hall!”
“I prefer not to think of it,” said Elinor. “But I wish with all my heart you had got it up at the Hall!”