the foot of the old staircase, there was the moon shining down from
some
window high up, and making the worm-eaten oak look very strange
and
delicate and lovely. In a moment she was putting her little feet one
after the other in the silvery path up the stair, looking behind as she
went, to see the shadow they made in the middle of the silver. Some
little girls would have been afraid to find themselves thus alone in the
middle of the night, but Irene was a princess.
As she went slowly up the stairs, not quite sure that she was not
dreaming, suddenly a great longing woke up in her heart to try once
more
whether she could not find the old, old lady with the silvery hair.
"If she is a dream," she said to herself, "then I am the likelier to
find her, if I am dreaming."
So up and up she went, stair after stair, until she came to the many
ro oms--all just as she had seen them before. Through passage after
passage she softly sped, comforting herself that if she should lose her
way it would not matter much, because when she woke she would find
herself in her own bed, with Lootie not far off. But as if she had known
Madhuri Noah
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