She dragged Max by one arm and Uncle Timothy by the other, to stand in front of it. Halfway down the hall, sharing one of the great chimneys with another fireplace on the other side of the wall, was a chimney-piece of fine old colonial design. The proportions were colossal.
"It would take a cord of wood to keep the thing going an evening," asserted Max.
"And then nobody'd be warm unless he was sitting with his head inside the hood," supplemented Alec.
But Sally was already off upon explorations. She rushed into the room upon the left of the hall; it was a drawing-room thirty feet long by twenty wide. She darted into the room on the right—it was twenty feet square, and back of it lay another of similar size. She could no longer wait for her party, with their slow and indifferent following of her, but ran from room to room, calling back injunctions to note special points of interest.
Bob kept close behind her. If he cared little for old houses, he cared much for Sally, and he liked to see her eyes sparkle and her lips laugh. Sally had times of being very sad and discouraged, as no one knew so well as he, and if she could find interest in this old barracks—he thought Alec had struck the right word—he was not the boy to dampen it.
"Let's skip up this back staircase, Bobby," proposed Sally, as they turned about from exploring the kitchen and store-rooms. "I'm crazy to find if there aren't some smaller rooms—nice, cozy ones, you know. It can't be all so big everywhere."
"Don't you suppose the upstairs rooms are just the shape of the lower ones?" suggested Bob, as they ran up.
"In front, perhaps, but not back here. There ought to be some lovely rambling passageways, and steps up and steps down, and rooms where you don't expect them, and a splendid attic—and perhaps a secret staircase. Bob—what if there should actually be a secret staircase!"
Bob laughed. "You've been reading spooky stories. I suppose—"
"Robert Rudd Lane! Will you behold that little flight of five steps, leading up to that door!"