"Oh, you little coward," laughed Billie good-naturedly, taking her arm.
"Come along, then."

The two young girls hastened down the long hall until they reached the
passage.

"Billie," whispered Nancy, pausing at the door. "You won't think me silly
if I tell you this? Of course it may have been imagination, but I was
awfully frightened when I came in here just now. I opened the door
suddenly and ran into the room before I realized it was dark. Then, of
course, I stopped short. The door had closed behind me and it seemed to
me that some one else was in the room. I remembered that as I opened the
door I heard some one move or collide with a chair. I stood perfectly
still for an instant. I was really frightened. Then I just flew."

"Perhaps it was one of the servants who had put out the lights and was
afraid to acknowledge it," suggested Billie. "The little maids are as
timid as wild things."

"But every servant in the house is in the dining room, I tell you. I saw
them as I went down the hall, and I counted them just for fun. There were
the four little maids and Onoye and O'Haru and Komatsu and the three
jinriksha men and the three old grandmothers and the gardener. There
aren't any others."

The door leading into the library was not a sliding panel of thick opaque
paper, like the usual Japanese door, but a real European door of heavy
wood with a brass handle.

"Don't you think we had better get your father, Billie, or one of the