Once outside the parlour door, the steep, crooked staircase attracted her attention.
"I'd like to go up that; can I, boy?" she asked Edmund.
"Let's take her and show her our attic," he suggested. Edmund loved the attics.
"Shall I carry you?" asked Montagu; "it's a long stair."
"Certainly not," said the little girl with great dignity; "peoples as old as me always walk upstairs."
She fell up a good many times during the ascent, for she kept stepping on her long coat in front, and every time she tripped she said: "Oh, dear, how tahsome!"
At length they reached the attic, and the moment she saw the four-post bed with the curtains she made a dart towards it, crying joyfully, "Oh, what a beautiful castle it will make. Now we can play my game."
She attempted to scramble up on to the bed, but again the coat got in the way and prevented her.
"Please take it off," she commanded, standing quite still, "and my bonnet."
Montagu unbuttoned the coat and untied the strings of the bonnet.