“I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to be eavesdropping,” she explained, “but we have a card that admits us into the room where the wax effigies are kept. You didn’t know there were wax works in Westminster Abbey, did you? And we thought perhaps you might like to go with us to see them. You know when royal persons died their bodies used to be carried through the streets for the people to see. But later they stopped that practice and effigies of wax were borne instead. And these are some of the effigies. Queen Elizabeth is there——”
“Oh, do let’s go,” cried Nancy.
It ended, therefore, by their accepting the invitation with much pleasure, and presently they found themselves with the English girl and the older woman, who was called “Fräulein Bloch,” and a verger, in a room over an ancient chapel. Here were laid out in state the waxen effigies of Queen Elizabeth, Charles II., William III. and Queen Mary, his wife, and Queen Anne. Certainly there was something very weird and ghastly about these wax images of kings and queens dead and gone, in all their royal regalia, crowded into glass cases around the wall. There was a battered old wax-doll likeness of the great Queen Elizabeth arrayed in faded finery, and an apathetic Charles in blue and red velvet robes trimmed with real point lace.
William and Mary were leaning up against each other sociably and lovingly in a case all by themselves; and close by was a large, heavy Queen Anne, an elaborate curly wig on her head and on her face a haughty fixed stare.
Whether it was the sight of all this past glory now so crumpled and faded, or whether it was that our tourists had eaten nothing since breakfast, it is hard to say. The Motor Maids always blamed what happened on the Duchess of Richmond. At any rate, Mary Price was standing just in front of that grotesque effigy, which was dressed in the very robes she had worn in life at the coronation of Queen Anne,—and by her side perched a stuffed parrot, said to have lived with her forty years,—when the young girl suddenly turned very pale and slipped down to the floor. So quietly did she fall that the others, who were viewing a jaunty effigy of Admiral Nelson, did not notice the little gray figure lying in a heap on the chapel floor.
It was growing late and the verger reminded them that they must be leaving before closing time. Laughing and talking softly together, they filed slowly out of the gloomy old place and the door was locked. And there all the time lay little Mary, as pale and stark as any of the wax kings and queens in the glass cases above her.
It all came back to them afterward like a curious dream, how they happened not to miss their friend even when they had returned to the church. In a remote corner somewhere a service was evidently being held. The sound of the organ and of boys chanting floated to them. Following their new friend and Fräulein Bloch, they presently entered the chapel and joined a few scattered worshippers kneeling at their devotions.
It was Billie who first noticed Mary’s absence, and she was rather surprised, because Mary was more religious than the others and loved these ceremonious services.
“Perhaps she is snooping about in some of the tombs,” she thought, and, whispering a word to Miss Campbell, she slipped out of the chapel and began a search for her friend. But Mary was nowhere in sight in the vast, dim place, and, with a somewhat anxious feeling, Billie hastened to join the others, who had now left the chapel and were waiting for her.
“Where is Mary?” she demanded.