p, curious look.

"Where do you live now?" said Mary aloud to her. "I wish you were
here."

Surely no other little girl ever spent such a queer morning. It seemed
as if there was no one in all the huge rambling house but her own small
self, wandering about upstairs and down, through narrow passages and
wide ones, where it seemed to her that no one but herself had ever
walked. Since so many rooms had been built, people must have lived in
them, but it all seemed so empty that she could not quite believe it
true.

It was not until she climbed to the second floor that she thought of
turning the handle of a door. All the doors were shut, as Mrs. Medlock
had said they were, but at last she put her hand on the handle of one
of them and turned it. She was almost frightened for a moment when she
felt that it turned without difficulty and that when she pushed upon
the door itself it slowly and heavily opened. It was a massive door
and opened into a big bedroom. There were embroidered hangings on the
wall, and inlaid furniture such as she had seen in India stood about
the room. A broad window with leaded panes looked out upon the moor;
and over the mantel was another portrait of the stiff, plain little
girl who seemed to stare at her more curiously than ever.

"Perhaps she slept here once," said Mary. "She stares at me so that
she makes me feel queer."

After that she opened more doors and more. She saw so many rooms that
she became quite tired and began to think that there must be a hundred,
though she had not counted them. In all of them there were old
pictures or old tapestries with strange scenes worked on them. There
were curious pieces of furniture and curious ornaments in nearly all of
them.

In one room, which looked like a lady's sitting-room, the hangings were
all embroidered velvet, and in a cabinet were about a hundred little
elephants made of ivory. They were of different sizes, and some had
their mahouts or palanquins on their backs. Some were much bigger than
the others and some were so tiny that they seemed only babies. Mary
had seen carved ivory in India and she knew all about elephants. She
opened the door of the cabinet and stood on a footstool and played with
these for quite a long time. When she got tired she set the elephants
in order and shut the door of the cabinet.

In all her wanderings through the long corridors and the empty rooms,
she had seen nothing alive; but in this room s