“No, it isn’t—­now,” she admitted, soberly, “but—­what a home it could be made!”

“It’s pretty near twice as big as our old one, and that was a fairly good size.  We could camp out in a corner of it, but that would be lonesome, don’t you think so?  We might keep summer boarders.”

Sally shook her head.  She began to walk back through the upper halls.  Bob followed her, and they climbed the attic stairs, finding a great space above, lighted by low windows shut in by patterns of ironwork.

“Jolly, what a place for rainy days!” ejaculated the boy, moved to greater enthusiasm than he had felt anywhere below stairs.  “You could have a workshop and a gymnasium and all sorts of things.  You could make it really festive with a few rugs and pillows and hammocks and things.  How the fellows I know would like to get up here!”

He lingered behind his sister, who, after one comprehensive look round the big, bare, dusty place, had slipped away downstairs again, guarding her skirts carefully.  When Bob, after planning in detail a possible and desirable arrangement of the attic, reluctantly descended, he found her at the top of the little flight of steps which led to the one locked door.

“Look out!  The family skeleton may be hidden behind that door!” he called, racing down the hall.  “Or worse.  Come away, Fatima!”

“Bob,” said Sally, regarding him from the top of the steps, her cheeks brightly flushed, her eyes alight with interest, “I simply have to know what’s beyond this door.”

“What are you expecting to find there, Sis?  Trunks full of gold?  Family papers, leaving all the Maxwell Lane estate to the Lanes of Henley Street?”

She shook her head with a laughing challenge.  “Wait till I get a locksmith here!” she said.

“I’ll wait,” and Bob sat composedly down on the bottom step, grinning up at his excited sister.  “Going to get him out by wireless?”

CHAPTER II

EVERYBODY EXPLORES

Alighting from her mother’s carriage in front of the Winona apartments in Henley Street, Josephine Burnside dismissed her coachman and hurried eagerly into the florid vestibule.

“I don’t see how Sally endures this sort of thing,” she thought, for the hundredth time since the Lane house, near her own in Grosvenor Place, had been sold.  The door-latch clicked promptly in answer to her ring, and at the top of the third flight she met Sally.

“I was sure it was you!  I’m so glad!  I’m all alone,” was Sally’s joyful welcome; and the next minute Josephine found herself inside the small passage, her outer garments being forcibly removed, and herself borne into the little living-room and established in Uncle Timothy’s reading chair, which was the most comfortable one in the place.

“Sewing—­as usual?  What are you making now?  Something lovely out of nothing at all, I suppose?”