"Margy's gone, and we can't find her, but we can hear her," explained Rose.
She need not have said the last, for Margy was still screaming:
"I want to get out! Take me out! It's terrible dark here!"
"Oh, the poor child's in the nut cubby-hole!" cried Grandma Ford. "Of course it's dark there! Wait a minute, my dear, and I'll get you out," she said.
Grandma Ford quickly crossed the attic. Then she stooped over in the dark corner, reached down, and lifted something up and there was—Margy!
The little girl was carried into the light, crying and sobbing; but, as soon as she found out there was nothing the matter with her, and that she was with her mother and grandmother and brothers and sisters, she stopped crying.
"What happened to you, Margy?" asked Russ.
"I—I don't know," she answered. "I just slipped like once when I rolled downhill."
"She fell into the nut cubby-hole," explained Grandma Ford. "There are many nut trees on Great Hedge Estate, and the Ripley family used to gather the nuts and store them here in the attic to dry. But the rats and mice used to take a great many of the nuts, so they built a sort of big box down in a hole in the floor. The hole was there anyhow, being part of the attic. But it was lined with tin, so the mice could not gnaw through, and the nuts were stored in it.
"I meant to tell you children to look out for it, as it is like a hole in the floor, though it is not very deep, and one end slopes down, like a hill, so you slide into it instead of falling.