fussing around here?"

But no breath of life stirred under the porch as she stooped to peer
through a break in the lattice, and with a final survey of the
premises, inserted her plump person into the gap and wriggled,
panting, into the darkness below.

It was stuffy and dusty there; the light filtered dimly through the
diamond spaces, and the adventurer, crawling on hands and knees,
bumped into a shadowy pile of flower-pots, sneezed violently and
grovelled wrathfully among the ruins for at least five minutes,
helplessly confused. Quite by accident she knocked her cobwebbed
head against a narrow, outward swinging window, seized it
thankfully, and plunged through it. Hanging a moment by her grimy
hands she swayed, a little fearfully, then dropped with a quick
breath to the concrete floor beneath, and smiled with relief as the
comparative brightness of a well kept cellar revealed her safety.
Vegetable bins, a neat pile of kindling wood, a large portable
closet of wire netting, with occasional plates and covered dishes
suggestively laid away in it, met her eye; on the floor in front of
this last rested a little heap of something wet and glistening.
Untidy as it looked, it had an eatable appearance to Caroline,
whose instinct in these matters was unimpeachable, and bending over
it she inserted one finger.

"Current jelly!" she whispered, thoughtfully licking the inquiring
member. "The idea!"

She approached the wire closet and peered along the shelves; there
was no jelly there.

"'Dropped it getting it out," she pursued, "I wonder why Selma
didn't wipe it up."

Suddenly her face brightened.

"We'll keep right on and pretend _'twas_ burglars," she announced to
the quiet cellar, "and they stole the jelly in a hurry and dropped
this and never noticed, and went upstairs to eat it and get the
silver! And so I found 'em, after all!"

Still on tiptoe, she left the cellar, stole through the laundry, and
crept mysteriously up the back stairs. So absorbed she was that a
cracking board stopped her heart for a breath, and a slip on the
landing sent her to her knees in terror. The empty quiet seemed to
hum around her; strange snappings of the old woodwork dried her
throat. With her hand on the swing door that led into the
dining-room, she paused in a delicious ecstasy of terror, as the
imagined clink of glass and silver, the normal clatter of a cheerful
meal, seemed to echo in the air.

It was always difficult for Caroline