“It may be so,” said the little French girl, dropping into a chair and folding her slender hands. “But truly, my friend, there is no other course.”
“Well!” Florence sprang to her feet. “Since we are to have his Reverence, or his Highness—or how do you speak of a god?—we must find him a safe resting place. Where can we hide him?”
A careful scrutiny of their narrow quarters revealed no safe hiding place.
“Your trunk? My dresser drawer? Under the mattress?” Petite Jeanne sighed. “May as well set him up here in the middle of the floor.” She placed the figure on the polished pine floor.
“But see!” Florence leaped forward. “Some one has cut a hole in the floor. I wonder why?”
“Some dark secret’s hidden there,” the little French girl whispered.
Florence had spoken the truth. In the very center of the floor three boards had been cut through twice. The pieces between the cuts, each some ten inches long, had been rudely pried up by the aid of some instrument. Something had undoubtedly been done; then the boards had been pounded back in place.
“Here!” exclaimed Florence, reaching for a heavy iron poker that stood by the fireplace. “Let’s have a look.”
Her first attempts to pry up the boards were unsuccessful. The poker slipped, then bent. When Petite Jeanne supplemented her labors with a broken case knife their labors were rewarded. The short length of board sprang from its place.
Eagerly they pressed forward to look, and bumped their heads together doing so. Then they dropped back in their places with a merry laugh.