She heard a voice—Diana’s voice, surely!
“Where are we? I can’t understand anything. Can you?”
Rubbing her eyes, Rachel looked again. Yes! Diana was beside her. She too was in her nightgown, and they were both standing on the pavement of some huge room which stretched away right and left into darkness. It certainly ought to have been frightening to find oneself all at once in an unknown place surrounded by mysterious shapes, in the middle of the night. But curiously enough, Rachel was not in the least frightened, nor, judging from her voice, was Diana. Both children were deliciously excited, indeed. But of fear there was not in either of them a trace.
“Do you know I believe it’s the Museum,” Rachel whispered. “Only it’s a part of it I’ve never been to before.”
“What’s that big thing up there?” returned Diana in an answering whisper. “Let’s come back a little—we shall see better.”
They were standing just under something that looked in the half light like a great block of stone on the top of which there was an object which neither of them could see distinctly.
Taking hands they moved backwards a few steps, and again looked up.
The silver-green moonlight, streaming in from some window high above their heads, fell full upon the face, and part of the body of a marble horse.
The statue aloft upon its pedestal looked very grand and majestic. But, as even in the dim light, the children could see, it was only after all a fragment of a statue.
“What a lovely horse. But he’s broken,” exclaimed Diana, still in a low voice. “Isn’t it a pity? There’s only his face and a piece of his body left. I wonder how he got broken?”