10 A curious thing
　　They went into a great doorway¹, and walked across the dark hall, which echoed strangely withtheir footsteps. From outside came the yelping² scream of the eagles again.
　　‘I expect it was the screams of the eagles that the villagers heard year after year up here,’ saidJack, as he made his way to a stout door that led off the hall. He opened it – and then stood still insurprise.
　　This room was furnished! It had once been a kind of sitting room or drawing room, and themouldy old furniture was still there, though the children could not imagine why it had been left!
　　They stood and stared into the old, forgotten room in silence. It was such a odd feeling to gazeon this musty-smelling, quiet room, lighted by four slit⁴ windows and one wide one, through whichsunlight came. It lit up the layers of dust on the sofas and vast table, and touched the enormouswebs and hanging cobwebs that were made by scores of busy spiders through the years.
　　Dinah shivered. When the others went further into the room, walking on tiptoe and talking inwhispers, she did not follow. Lucy-Ann patted a chair and at once a cloud of dust arose, makingher choke. Philip pulled at a cover on one of the sofas, and it fell to pieces in his hands. It wasquite rotten.
　　‘What a weird⁵ old room!’ he said. ‘I feel as if I was back a hundred years or so. Time has stoodstill here. I do wonder why this room was left like this.’
　　They went out and into the next one. That was quite empty. But the third one, smaller, andevidently used as a dining-room, was again furnished. And again the spiders’ webs stretchedeverywhere and hung down in long grey threads from the high ceilings. There was a greatsideboard in the room, and when the children curiously⁶ opened one of the doors, they saw oldchina and pieces of silver there – or what must have been silver, for now the cruets and sauce-boats were so terribly tarnished⁷ that they might have been made of anything.
　　‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ said Lucy- Ann, quoting Alice in Wonderland. ‘Why have theserooms been left like this?’

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