The Hidden House

Chapter Two

"Well, it's about time you were home!" Bessie scolded as Anabelle and Nathaniel stepped into the warm, little kitchen of the thatch-roofed cottage in which they lived. Bessie, wearing a stained apron over a homemade dress, her auburn hair frazzled, and her cheeks pink from cooking by the fireplace, rushed toward the two children. "Where were you?"

"W-Well," Nathaniel stammered, "We were... We were playing."

"Where?" Bessie demanded as she rested her fists upon her hips.

"Why, by the old oak tree!" Anabelle innocently chimed in, "The one a half-mile from here. Isn't that right, Nathaniel?"

"Um, y-yes, it is," he muttered. Bessie, growing more suspicious by the second, glared at her brother as he stared guiltily at the floor.

"Is this the truth, Nathaniel?" She asked him.

"Well..."

"Is it?!" After Bessie asked this, Nathaniel could not bear to lie any longer. Like a balloon that had been pricked with a needle, the truth blew out of him all at once.

"Anabelle and I were playing- she ran off too far, so I ran after her- and we finally stopped at the top of a hill- and we saw this great, big palace-"

"Nathaniel!" Anabelle scolded him, but he persisted.

"And she told me she wouldn't return to the cottage unless I kept the palace a secret from you- so I promised her, just so we could leave- and we returned here."

"You went to another house?!" Bessie demanded, more frightened than cross with the children. "I warned you both to never go about looking for houses!"

"We were not looking for houses," Anabelle argued. "We simply happened to come across one. And what a marvelous house it was! It was as tall and wide as ten, no, twenty cottages! It could very-well be a palace reserved for the King!"

"Why, that must have been Pallas House..." Bessie whispered to herself as fear spread across her pale face.

"Pallas House?" Anabelle repeated. "Do you know it?"

"Well," Bessie began sternly again, "I know of it, and I know that children such as yourselves ought not to be lurking about it!"

"Whose house is it?" Anabelle asked.

"Nobody's!" Bessie declared. "It has been unoccupied for years."

"Then why must we keep away from it?"

"Because it is in a state of disrepair; it could collapse upon you if you were to go near it."

"But why was it abandoned at all?" Anabelle persisted.

"No more questions!" Bessie shouted. "You are not to go there again. Am I understood?"

Anabelle and Nathaniel nodded. Nathaniel had been entirely dissuaded from ever returning to Pallas House again. But Anabelle had not.