curious ornaments in nearly all of them.

In one room, which looked like a lady's sitting-room, the hangings were
all embroidered velvet, and in a cabinet were about a hundred little
elephants made of ivory. They were of different sizes, and some had
their mahouts or palanquins on their backs. Some were much bigger than
the others and some were so tiny that they seemed only babies. Mary had
seen carved ivory in India and she knew all about elephants. She opened
the door of the cabinet and stood on a footstool and played with these
for quite a long time. When she got tired she set the elephants in
order and shut the door of the cabinet.

In all her wanderings through the long corridors and the empty rooms,
she had seen nothing alive; but in this room she saw something. Just
after she had closed the cabinet door she heard a tiny rustling sound.
It made her jump and look around at the sofa by the fireplace, from
which it seemed to come. In the corner of the sofa there was a cushion,
and in the velvet which covered it there was a hole, and out of the hole
peeped a tiny head with a pair of frightened eyes in it.

Mary crept softly across the room to look. The bright eyes belonged to a
little gray mouse, and the mouse had eaten a hole into the cushion and
made a comfortable nest there. Six baby mice were cuddled up asleep near
her. If there was no one else alive in the hundred rooms there were
seven mice who did not look lonely at all.

"If they wouldn't be so frightened I would take them back with me," said
Mary.

She had wandered about long enough to feel too tired to wander any
farther, and she turned back. Two or three times she lost her way by
turning down the wrong corridor and was obliged to ramble up and down
until she found the right one; but at last she reached her own floor
again, though she was some distance from her own room and did not know
exactly where she was.

"I believe I have taken a wrong turning again," she said, standing still
at what seemed the end of a short passage with tapestry on the wall. "I
don't know which way to go. How still everything is!"

It was while she was standing here and just after she had said this that
the stillness was broken by a sound. It was another cry, but not quite
like the one she had heard last night; it was only a short one, a
fretful, childish whine muffled by passing through walls.

"It's nearer than it was," said Mary, her heart beating rather faster.
"And it _