Angela glanced at Nick.  He was intent on the children and had not seen the girl.  Again the pretty creature nodded and beckoned, and Angela’s curiosity was fired.  Apparently there was something which she alone was privileged to see.  She was amused and childishly flattered.  It would be fun, she thought, to steal away and give Mr. Hilliard a surprise when he turned round to find her gone.  Then, just when he was beginning to be frightened, she would come back and tell him her small adventure—­whatever it might prove to be.

Cautiously she moved to the door, which the girl as cautiously opened wider.  Then, in a second, she was out in the dusky passageway, beside her smiling guide.

XX

THE DOOR WITH THE RED LABEL

“Mellican gell see ole Chineseman smokee opum pipe?” the girl asked.

“Why, you speak English!” exclaimed Angela, forgetting in her surprise that here was only a very little of China set in the midst of a great deal of America.

“I go school one time,” said the girl.  “Dis times I fo’get sometings.  You come Chinese gell.  You velly pletty.”

Angela laughed, and went, guilty but excited.  This was too good an adventure to miss.  Schermerhorn must know the inhabitants and habits of this place, and he would guess what had become of her, when they found her gone.  “So are you very pretty,” she smiled.

“Yes,” replied the girl, in her little metallic voice.  “I like you.  You like me.  You give one dollah; I take you see Chinese man smokes mo’ ’n all oddeh mens.  He velly old—­knows ebelyting.”

“Oh, I am to pay you a dollar!  So it isn’t all for love of my beaux yeux,” murmured Angela.  But she gave the sum, glad that she had spent most of her money in buying jade and ivory, which now encumbered Nick’s pockets.  The girl took first her dollar and next her gloved hand.  Then, opening one of the unpainted doors in the long, dusky passage, she led her companion into a dark cellar.

“Where are you taking me?” Angela inquired, thinking with sudden longing of the lighted room of the musician, where Nick was perhaps beginning to look for her.

“Next-do’h house,” replied the girl calmly; and Angela would have been ashamed to draw back, even had curiosity and a faint excitement not compelled her to go on.  At one end of the cellar was a wooden stairway, very steep, going both up and down.  She and her conductor went down one flight, then along a short passage, then up some steps, then down a few more.  Angela was enjoying the experience, but her joy was spiced with fear.

The two girls were in a very strange house, much stranger, Angela thought, than the one they had left.  It was a rabbit-warren of tiny, boxlike rooms, threaded with narrow, labyrinthine passages, just wide enough for two slim persons to pass side by side.  The rough wooden walls were neither painted nor stained, and the knot-holes were stuffed with rags.  Here and there a rude door was open, hanging crookedly on its hinges, while the occupant talked with a friend outside, or prepared for an expedition, laden with kitchen utensils, coal and food, to the common cooking-place of the rabbit colony—­a queer and dismal set of iron shelves, long and narrow, sticking out from a wall, and calling itself an oven.