[CHAPTER VII—CAP TO THE RESCUE]
Where was she? What could be so black?
Nora gasped—it was so stifling. Fumbling in the strange place her hand found the door and as she pressed against it she heard it shut!
“Oh mercy!” she exclaimed aloud. “I’m shut in this awful place!”
Now her eyes could make out the rafters. It was the attic, but what part of it? The faintest gleam of light breaking in from above followed the rough beams. The frightened girl fell back breathing hard and feeling faint. To faint in the attic! Surely that would be romantic! But she didn’t want to faint all alone up there and maybe die and not be found for years, as she had read happened once to a bride who went up to look for her grandmother’s quilt.
She was so dizzy. She really must sit down. Not even a hazy fear of rats roused her, for it was unbearably hot and stuffy.
“O-o-o-h!”
That was the end of Nora for the time being. She succumbed to the first faint she had ever performed, and there was no one to see her, no one to rescue her, not one even to know where she was!
Such a little prince!
Velvets and ribbons brushed cobwebs and dust, as she slumped down, down——!