The boys were eager for the hunt.
“You mustn’t take matches in there. You might drop one and set the house afire. You can use the little lantern—that will be safe. Be careful you don’t come through the plastering—there must be some sort of an open space over the central part of the house though I don’t know where there’s any way to reach it. It will be stone dark if there is—there are no outside windows.”
While the exploring party was trying to decide whether to start in with the front room closet or begin with the one in the maid’s room at the back of the house, Katy and Gertie appeared on the scene. They promptly begged to go, too.
“Well, ask your mother and get some old clothes on,” Mrs. Morton consented finally after Chicken Little had teased for several minutes.
They were off and back in no time, arrayed in outgrown dresses that gave them the appearance of being all arms and legs.
“Mother said she wished she could come, too. She said it would be almost as much fun as exploring a desert island,” reported Katy.
It was finally agreed to try the front room closet first. This closet was a lofty, roomy looking affair for about six feet, then as the roof slanted sharply downward, faded away into darkness. It was floored and ceiled to within three feet of the point where roof and floor met, and it was only by getting down on hands and knees that the children could crawl, through the aperture left unboarded, into the narrow, unused spaces next the eaves.
Sherm and Ernest made the first venture, but their progress was soon cut off short by a partition. So they wriggled back adorned with cobwebs and sneezing from the dust they had stirred up.
“Let’s try the closet in Chicken Little’s room next—that’s one of the biggest.”
This time Carol and Katy did the scouting with the same results except that they found an open space between the roof and the uprights and lath and plaster of the partition, which seemed to lead up to some sort of an attic over the main part of the house.