“No I’m not!” retorted Sue. “What’s there to be afraid of, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” said Solita. “But it’s kind of spooky, I think. Let’s go home.” But with that Solita rose and pretended to try the door. She didn’t push it at all.
“Oh, I can get it open! You’re not pushing,” Sue exclaimed. “We’ll do it together. You turn and I’ll push—what’s the use of backing down? Let’s go in.” So the two together pushed and pulled and the door suddenly yielded. Its latch must have been very old and rusty indeed!
The opening of the door came as a real surprise, and it swung back against the wall inside the house with a loud bang that echoed through all the lonely darkness of the hallway. There was only a little light that came from the slats of broken blinds here and there in the open room that was just off the hall.
Sue took the lead. Solita followed, ready to run back at any minute. It was certainly an adventure, this entering in upon the solitude of that deserted house, long closed. “I don’t think it’s at all nice to go into people’s houses while they’re away,” she urged. “I’m going back. I think we ought not to have come in here at all—it’s ever so dark. I can’t see anything—Where’re you, Sue?”
“I’m not a scare-cat,” replied Sue. “You were the one who wanted to find the basket for the berries. Come ahead! It isn’t dark—this is lots of fun!”
“I’m going to use my dress, anyhow,” protested Solita. “I don’t want any basket.” But for the sake of company chiefly, perhaps, she followed Sue, who was investigating the empty house. Here and there she poked under dusty furniture and into old, vacant closets. There seemed to be no basket—not even an old box or tin pan, rusty from disuse. “Come ahead, Solita,” she kept saying. “Nobody’s going to eat you up. If anybody comes for such a purpose, they can begin and eat up the blackberries that are on the doorstep.” So she kept on hunting. Really, after a while, when they were used to the noise that their feet made and to the echo of their voices in the dim, closed rooms, it was rather interesting. All they found was a rusty hammer downstairs, so Sue decided to go above and look some more.
Everything there was rickety and the stairs squeaked and frightened Solita but she laughed—indeed, she was beginning to get over her timidity and enjoy the quest.
The chambers opened into the hall upstairs so that it looked like one big room except at one end of the rear room where the roof sloped. There was a real little bit of a room that must have belonged to some child. There were two little broken toy dishes in it on the floor. They were all thick with dust, so Sue did not pick them up. Solita was safely in the rear near the stairs. She declared from time to time that there was no basket and that they’d better go home but Sue kept on. It isn’t every day that one can have a real adventure. She enjoyed the creepy feeling that came with exploring dim corners.
“When my great-great-grandfather was a little boy,” she mused, “he must have lived in a house like this. Father told me a story about how he used to slide down the roof and land on the grass below just for fun. Fancy doing a thing like that!”