There was no one on the stairs, or in the hall, or in the dining-room,
or in the drawing-room. The library and billiard-room were empty of
living people, and the door of the nursery was locked. So then Philip
made his way into the regions beyond the baize door, where the servants'
quarters were. And there was no one in the kitchen, or in the servants'
hall, or in the butler's pantry, or in the scullery, or the washhouse,
or the larder. In all that big house, and it was much bigger than it
looked from the front because of the long wings that ran out on each
side of its back--in all that big house there was no one but Philip. He
felt certain of this before he ran upstairs and looked in all the
bedrooms and in the little picture gallery and the music-room, and then
in the servants' bedrooms and the very attics. There were interesting
things in those attics, but Philip only remembered that afterwards. Now
he tore down the stairs three at a time. All the room doors were open as
he had left them, and somehow those open doors frightened him more than
anything else. He ran along the corridors, down more stairs, past more
open doors and out through the back kitchen, along the moss-grown walk
by the brick wall and so round by the three yew trees and the mounting
block to the stable-yard. And there was no one there. Neither coachman
nor groom nor stable-boys. And there was no one in the stables, or the
coach-house, or the harness-room, or the loft.
Philip felt that he could not go back into the house. Something terrible
must have happened. Was it possible that any one could want the Grange
servants enough to kidnap them? Philip thought of the nurse and felt
that, at least as far as she was concerned, it was _not_ possible. Or
perhaps it was magic! A sort of Sleeping-Beauty happening! Only every
one had vanished instead of just being put to sleep for a hundred years.
He was alone in the middle of the stable-yard when the thought came to
him.
'Perhaps they're only made invisible. Perhaps they're all here and
watching me and making fun of me.'
He stood still to think this. It was not a pleasant thought.
Suddenly he straightened his little back, and threw back his head.
'They shan't see I'm frightened anyway,' he told himself. And then he
remembered the larder.
'I haven't had any breakfast,' he explained aloud, so as to be plainly
heard by any invisible people who might be about. 'I ought to have my
breakfast. If nobody gives it to me I shall take my breakfast.'
He waited for an answer. But none came. It was very quiet in the
stable-yard. Only the rattle of a halter ring against a manger, the
sound of a hoof on stable stones, the cooing of pigeons and the rustle
of straw in the loose-box broke the silence.
'Very well,' said Philip. 'I don't know what _you_ think I ought to have
for breakfast, so I shall take what _I_ think.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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