Desire was pale, with a dry sob in her throat, when the woman had gone and Luclarion turned round.

“The angels in heaven know; why shouldn’t you?” said Luclarion.  “That’s what we’ve got to help.”

A child came in afterwards, alone; with an actual clean spot in the middle of her face, where a ginger-nut or an acid drop might go in.  This was a regular customer of a week past.  The week had made that clean spot; with a few pleasant and encouraging hints from Luclarion, administered along with the gingerbread.

Now it was Hazel’s turn.

The round mouth and eyes, with expectation in them, were like a spot of green to Hazel, feeling with her witch-wand for a human spring.  But she spoke to Desire, looking cunningly at the child.

“Let us go back and swing,” she said.

The girl’s head pricked itself up quickly.

“We’ve got a swing up-stairs,” said Hazel, passing close by, and just pausing.  “A new one.  I guess it goes pretty high; and it looks out of top windows.  Wouldn’t you like to come and see?”

The child lived down in a cellar.

“Take up some ginger-nuts, and eat them there,” said Luclarion to Hazel.

If it had not been for that, the girl would have hung back, afraid of losing her shop treat.

Hazel knew better than to hold out her hand, at this first essay; she would do that fast enough when the time came.  She only walked on, through the sitting-room, to the stairs.

The girl peeped, and followed.

Clean stairs.  She had never trodden such before.  Everything was strange and clean here, as she had never seen anything before in all her life, except the sky and the white clouds overhead.  Heaven be thanked that they are held over us, spotless, always!

Hazel heard the little feet, shuffling, in horrible, distorted shoes, after her, over the steps; pausing, coming slowly but still starting again, and coming on.

Up on the high landing, under the skylight, she opened the door wide into the dormer-windowed room, and went in; she and Desire, neither of them looking round.

Hazel got into the swing.  Desire pushed; after three vibrations they saw the ragged figure standing in the doorway, watching, turning its head from side to side as the swing passed.

“Almost!” cried Hazel, with her feet up at the window.  “There!” She thrust them out at that next swing; they looked as if they touched the blue.

“I can see over all the chimneys, and away off, down the water!  Now let the old cat die.”

Out again, with a spring, as the swinging slackened, she still took no notice of the child, who would have run, like a wild kitten, if she had gone after her.  She called Desire, and plunged into a closet under the eaves.

“I wonder what’s here!” she exclaimed.

“Rats!”

The girl in the doorway saw the dark, into which the low door opened; she was used to rats in the dark.