“Would you be kind enough to tell me where Mr. Ritchie, the cobbler, has his—shop?” Billie asked hesitatingly of a woman who had opened a door and was peering into the hallway.
“Since you hae na’ found it at the bottom, I hae no doot ye’ll find it at the top,” she answered and banged the door to.
“Crusty isn’t the word to describe her,” remarked Nancy. “I hae no doot either since we are verra near the top,—we are there, in fact,” she added as they reached the last landing at the end of seven flights of stairs.
And there indeed was Mr. Ritchie’s sign and a symbol of his labor in the form of a wooden Wellington boot.
They knocked timidly and a voice shouted angrily:
“Well, well, canna ye read? Dinna ye ken this is a shop and there’s nae necessity to go bangin’ and rappin’ at the door?”
“Let’s run, Billie. I’m afraid,” whispered Nancy.
They grasped hands and were making for the stairs at the far end of the corridor when an old man opened the door and glared out into the passage. He carried a thick knotted stick in one hand and his face was distorted with rage. What he said it was impossible to understand, a volley of words that all seemed to end in “cht.” But he ran so nimbly after them down the steps and was so close on their heels that on the floor below, without pausing to consider, the terrified girls opened the nearest door and rushed inside. There was a key in the lock and Billie promptly turned it.
Bang! went the club on the door.
“I hope he won’t burst it in,” whispered Billie, crouching on the floor, and Nancy, kneeling beside her, was too frightened to reply. But they presently heard steps retreating along the hall and up the stairs, and Mr. A. Ritchie returned to his lair like an angry lion.