“Excuse me, Miss Polly,” she apologized, when Mr. Oliver had opened the door, “but can you tell me where the little girls from next door are?”
“They must have gone home,” Miss Polly answered. “They left here some time ago.”
“They never came down-stairs,” Maggie objected. “I’ve been waiting in the front hall all the time. I think they must be hiding somewhere.”
Miss Polly laughed her old merry laugh, that nobody in the boarding-house had heard in months.
“They are not hiding,” she said. “They have probably gone home through the mysterious door in the wall.”
Dulcie and Daisy were very happy as they made their way, for the last time, through the familiar housemaid’s closet, to their own trunk-room, but their troubles were not yet over. In the excitement of the moment they had quite forgotten the important fact that Mary was cleaning the nursery. Now it happened that at the very moment when the two little figures emerged from the trunk-room, Mary had gone out into the hall, and the sight that met her eyes was so astonishing that, as she afterwards expressed it to Bridget, “she nearly dropped down stone dead on the spot.” Explanations followed, and Mary was made acquainted with the famous door in the wall.
“Grandpa had it cut through when his brother lived here,” Dulcie explained. “They were both writers, and they had their studies up here on the top floor. The door was so they could go from one study to the other without having to go down-stairs. We’ve known about it for a long time, but we couldn’t tell, because we were afraid Grandma would fasten it, and then we couldn’t go to see poor Miss Polly. But now we don’t care whether Grandma fastens the door or not, because of course Miss Polly’s brother will take her home with him, and we won’t want to go in next door any more.”
Mary looked down thoughtfully at the two flushed little faces.
“If Mrs. Winslow finds out there’ll be a fuss,” she remarked. “Maybe I can fasten the door myself; I see there’s a bolt.”
“You mean you won’t tell Grandma?” cried Dulcie, scarcely able to believe in their good fortune.