I raised the long strip of hanging as I spoke, and to my surprise—to my alarm I might almost say—I discovered a bolted door behind it.
"See here, Amabel!" said I. "This door opens into the ghost room! Are you not afraid?"
"No, I don't know that I am!" replied Amabel. "There is a good substantial bolt, as you see, and as for the ghost I believe that sort of gentry do not need doors for their entrance and exit."
"Would you dare open it?" said I. "I have a curiosity to see how a room looks into which no one has set foot for two hundred years and more."
"Well, look then! What harm can it do! And yet after all I would let it alone, I think!" said Amabel. "Perhaps Mrs. Deborah would not like it."
At that moment Amabel was called down stairs to attend to some matter or other. I looked at the bolted door and my curiosity grew stronger. I could not think of any harm it would do to take a peep, and I wanted to see what a ghost's room looked like. So I pushed back the bolt and opened the door with less difficulty than I expected, rather dreading all the time, lest I should see the poor wolf-lady's green fiery eyes glaring at me through the darkness.
However, I saw nothing of the kind. The door opened into a kind of closet or press, and that into a common-place looking room enough, with a bed hung with dark faded red stuff, and other furniture of the same sort. The windows were close shuttered, and overgrown with ivy, but a little light struggled through the round apertures in the top of the shutters.
Certainly, the room was dusty and smelled close, but for a room unused for two hundred years, it had a remarkably modern appearance. I guessed at once that I had intruded unwittingly into some family secret, and was not slow in coming to a conclusion as to its import. I drew back at once, and closing the door I pushed the cabinet back into its place, determining to tell Mrs. Deborah what I had done. I took an opportunity of doing so when we were together in the still-room next morning. Mrs. Deborah looked surprised but not offended.
"You are a bold girl, Lucy. Were you not afraid?"
"No, Aunt Deborah. I did not believe anything would hurt me, and I had a great desire to see what the place was like."