"Next-do'h house," replied the girl calmly; and Angela would have been
ashamed to draw back, even had curiosity and a faint excitement not
compelled her to go on. At one end of the cellar was a wooden stairway,
very steep, going both up and down. She and her conductor went down one
flight, then along a short passage, then up some steps, then down a few
more. Angela was enjoying the experience, but her joy was spiced with
fear.
The two girls were in a very strange house, much stranger, Angela thought,
than the one they had left. It was a rabbit-warren of tiny, boxlike rooms,
threaded with narrow, labyrinthine passages, just wide enough for two slim
persons to pass side by side. The rough wooden walls were neither painted
nor stained, and the knot-holes were stuffed with rags. Here and there a
rude door was open, hanging crookedly on its hinges, while the occupant
talked with a friend outside, or prepared for an expedition, laden with
kitchen utensils, coal and food, to the common cooking-place of the rabbit
colony--a queer and dismal set of iron shelves, long and narrow, sticking
out from a wall, and calling itself an oven.
Each door of each tiny room, which housed an individual or a whole family,
had the name of the owner upon it, in Chinese characters, black and
sprawling, on a red label; and at one whose paper name-plate was peeling
off, Angela's companion stopped.
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