They approached a dark alley beside an Italian tenement. Eleanor, dancing around the corner, came upon it suddenly. She drew up. 160
“There’s an ogre in this dark den—I know there is. I must see him! Just think, I’m ten years old going onto eleven, and I never yet saw a real ogre. Come on—we’re going ogre hunting!” She plunged into the shadows. Mark, laughing, followed.
Eleanor peeped into the door of a wine-house, peeped over a board fence, and came back to announce:
“He’s not in. I left my card—oh, there he is—he’s visiting the goblin in that garden across the street!” She skipped across to an old stone wall which held its half-acre of earth suspended over the hill-fall. Mark skipped with her; Bertram followed at a distance as one who plays a game of which he is not sure. Eleanor brought up against the wall.
“There he is—by the kitchen door. Of course you see him! Good, Kind ogre, you don’t eat little girls on their birthdays do you?”
“Aren’t his red eyes beautiful and hasn’t he a classy set of teeth?” rejoined Mark Heath. “Be good, Fido, and you shall have a plumber for breakfast.”
“But he’ll spare me! He says I’m too beautiful 161 to eat!” Eleanor was dancing back. “Oh Kate, I’ve seen an ogre!”
Kate did not answer. She fell in with Mark Heath, and as they drew ahead she murmured:
“I wonder what’s got into her?”
“Nothing I guess. I should rather say she’d got out. I think it’s bully.”