'All right,' said David; 'here we are. Now we'll just go in, and look about us. Then if you'll sit and rest a bit, I'll run down and see where we can get something to eat.'
'Be quick, then—do,' said Louie. 'I'm just fit to drop.'
With a beating heart he put the key into the lock of the door. It fitted, but he could not turn it. Both he and Louie tried in vain.
'What a nuisance!' said he at last. 'I must go and fetch up that woman again. You sit down and wait.'
As he spoke there was a sound below of quick steps, and of a voice, a woman's voice, humming a song.
'Some one coming,' he said to Louie; 'perhaps they understand the lock.'
They ran down to the landing below to reconnoitre. There was, of course, gas on the staircase, and as they hung over the iron railing they saw mounting towards them a young girl. She wore a light fawn-coloured dress and a hat covered with Parma violets. Hearing voices above her, she threw her head back, and stopped a moment. Louie's eye was caught by her hand and its tiny wrist as it lay on the balustrade, and by the coils and twists of her fair hair. David saw no details, only what seemed to him a miracle of grace and colour, born in an instant, out of the dark—or out of his own excited fancy?
She came slowly up the steps, looking at them, at the tall dark youth and the girl beside him. Then on the top step she paused, instead of going past them. David took off his hat, but all the practical questions he had meant to ask deserted him. His French seemed to have flown.
'You are strangers, aren't you?' she said, in a clear, high, somewhat imperious voice. 'What number do you want?'
Her expression had a certain hauteur, as of one defending her native ground against intruders. Under the stimulus of it David found his tongue.