CHAPTER XVII.
IN AN EMPTY HOUSE.
It was with a certain air of importance that Mrs. Winter walked along the pavement, closely followed by Madge. The friendly old woman always took a great interest in her neighbours' affairs, and she thoroughly enjoyed seeing the recovery of the lost money with her own eyes. When, after about a dozen steps, the front-door of the adjoining house was reached, Mrs. Winter smiled with conscious pride as she put the key into the key-hole. It was a critical moment. If the children ever recovered their lost money it would be entirely owing to her exertions. Not many elderly women in Churchbury that afternoon were playing such an exciting part.
The street in which Mrs. Winter lived was an old one, and consequently built without any regularity. It thus happened that next to Mrs. Winter's tiny shop stood a substantial family dwelling-house, whose cellars, as it has been said, took up rather more room on the pavement than seemed rightly to belong to them. Since the death of the last occupant some time before, the house had stood empty; only the caretaker visited it occasionally to air the rooms.
When Mrs. Winter pushed the heavy, creaking front-door open Madge followed her into a roomy hall, out of which a handsome staircase led to the upper part of the house. It was all very dignified and dreary. When the door was shut the noise echoed all over the house. It was not a very cheerful sound, especially heard in the sombre twilight caused by windows with the blinds all drawn down.
"We shall want a light for the cellar," observed Mrs. Winter. "The man said I should find all that was required on the window-sill in the hall—and here it is too!" she continued joyfully, holding up as she spoke a box of matches and a short candle stuck in a bottle.
Madge was exceedingly interested in this simple form of candlestick, and asked permission to carry it, in spite of the grease trickling down the bottle on to her fingers at every draught, as soon as the candle was lighted.
"It's a fine house. I've been over it many a time in old Doctor Freeman's day," said Mrs. Winter thoughtfully. "But it isn't much to see now since the sale, with all the furniture gone out of the rooms and the carpets up. Besides, we have not the time to lose going over it, or the lady will get tired of waiting for you."
Madge always liked investigating unknown places and things, but still she could not deny that Miss Thompson was awaiting her return rather anxiously. And when Mrs. Winter, taking another key fully as large as the first, proceeded to push open a heavy door and disclose a steep flight of slippery stone steps leading downwards into the cellars, Madge had the comfort of feeling that at all events she was seeing the most interesting part of the house. The bedrooms, or even attics, could not be as thrilling as that yawning chasm beneath her feet into which she was now about to plunge.
"Poor old Doctor Freeman set a great store on his collection of wine," observed Mrs. Winter as she slowly went down the cellar steps, feeling with her hands along the wall, for the bit of candle that Madge carried in front gave a very insufficient light, and she was terribly afraid of slipping. However, her nervousness did not prevent her from giving Madge a long account of the sale that had taken place after Dr. Freeman's death, and of the large sums of money that people gave for his treasured collections of wine.