“Confess, now, Nancy-Bell, didn’t it hurt like forty?”
“Whither shall we go?” answered the other, pretending not to have heard the question. “Shall we do the pictures and churches again or go to Holyrood Palace and nose around among old murders?”
“Heavens, no! Let’s do the Old Town. Don’t you think it would be rather interesting to skulk about that old place in the rain?”
Nancy assented and the two girls climbed up the steep slippery streets on a slumming expedition which Miss Campbell would certainly have forbidden had she been informed. The fine rain washed against their faces and the breeze from, the ocean tasted salty on their lips.
“This is truly a city built upon a hill,” said Billie. “And what shall we do now we are here, Nancy? Can’t you think of some excuse?”
“Let’s do the first thing that suggests itself. The spirit moves me to go into this old courtyard and look about.”
They turned through an archway leading into a quadrangular court, the pavings of which were worn into uneven surfaces. Ragged children peeped at them from the windows and doors of the rickety houses forming the quadrangle, and from the window of the nearest house a sallow-faced woman, washing clothes, gave them a sour glance and silently went about her work. An ugly visaged man scowled at them from over her shoulder. Feeling a little frightened, the two girls hastened toward an arched entrance to a hallway where hung several signs conspicuously placed.
“Billie, I have an inspiration,” whispered Nancy. “Suppose we get Mr. A. Ritchie, Cobbler, to straighten the heel on my left shoe.”
Having reached a decision as soon as the suggestion was made, they entered the hallway on what Billie always termed afterward “Nancy’s left-heel adventure.”
Up an interminable flight of steps they began their climb, and those they met on the way, mostly sandy-haired children with sad, hungry eyes and thin gaunt women with sullen faces, scarcely noticed them at all. On each landing they paused and searched for Mr. Ritchie’s sign, which had been one of those at the entrance, but evidently his abode was still higher.