"Now, Ann," said he sternly, though in rather a weak voice, "don't you know what this is? This is an adventure."
"I don't care," sniffed Ann, "I don't want an adventure. I want to go back—back to Aunt Jane!" And the sniff developed into a flood of tears.
"Peter is not crying, and he is only six."
This rebuke told on Ann, for she was almost eight. "But what are we go—going to do?" she asked, her sobs decreasing into sniffs again.
"We'll just have to go on, I suppose, and see what happens."
"Well, I think—I think Aunt Jane ought to be ashamed of herself to put us in such a big bed we could get lost in it!"
"Maybe"—came the voice of Peter cheerfully from behind them—"maybe she wanted to lose us, like bad people does kittens."
"Peter, don't be silly," ordered Rudolf sternly. "There isn't really anything that can happen to us," he went on, speaking slowly and thoughtfully, "because we all know that we really are in bed. We know we didn't get out, so of course we must be in."
This was good sense, yet somehow it was not so comforting as it ought to have been, not even to Rudolf himself who now began to be troubled by a disagreeable kind of lump in his throat. Luckily he remembered, in time to save himself from the disgrace of tears, how his father had once told him that whistling was an excellent remedy for boys who did not feel quite happy in their minds. He began to whistle now, a poor, weak, little whistle at first, but growing stronger as he began to feel more cheerful. Grasping his sword, he started ahead, calling to the others to follow him.
The white passage was so narrow that the children had to walk along it one behind another in Indian file. The floor was no longer soft and yielding but firm and hard under their feet, and by stretching out their hands they could almost touch the smooth white walls on either side of them. At first the way was perfectly straight ahead, but after they had walked what seemed to them a long, long time, the passage curved sharply and widened a little. The children noticed, much to their relief, that it was growing lighter around them.