“That’s the house that disappeared!” cried the three children all at once.
“Only,” Tommy added, “you forgot the walk that went up to the window.”
“The walk! The walk! My stars! That was no walk!” exclaimed the magician. “That was only a plank that the moving men placed there so that they could move in my big table without carrying it up three flights of stairs.”
“How could there be three flights of stairs in such a tiny house?” asked Mary.
Without a word, the magician began drawing another picture. It was a picture of the side of the house and now the children knew the secret.
“You see,” he explained, “it’s a trick house, although I swear when I bought it I had no idea that it would ever fool anybody. I just wanted a bigger lawn so I chose a house built back into the side of a hill. It’s a steep hill. You must know that if you climbed down it. So the house is only one story high where the hill cuts into it and three stories high where it faces the road.”
“And we ran away without looking!” exclaimed Muffs, “because we were so scared.”
“You’re not afraid of me now, are you?” he asked gently.