CHAPTER XV

Secrets of the East

Judy and Peter climbed to the third floor, tiptoeing so as not to disturb their sleeping guests. All was quiet on the second floor. The stairway went right on up to what was not a cobwebby old attic, but three neat little rooms at the top of the house.

The room in the middle had dormer windows that gave enough light for sewing. Here Judy had placed her sewing machine. Opposite it was a large chest of drawers, a chair, and a bookcase filled with things she treasured.

In one of the other rooms her grandmother’s things were stored. Judy had never got around to sorting all of them.

In the third room were things she had saved herself. The wall was lined with books she had loved and didn’t want to part with. She had taken them all to her grandmother’s house the summer before the flood. Her old dolls were there too.

It was in this room that Judy found what she was looking for—a stack of old magazines.

“It must be in this pile here somewhere,” she told Peter, rapidly going through the stack. “It was an article in an old issue of _Life_, and it had lots of pictures in color of Hindu gods and goddesses. I’ll know it by its cover—a Hindu girl with some kind of an ornament on her forehead. Do you remember it, Peter?”

“I believe I do,” he replied. “There were pictures of gods and goddesses on a big fold-out page. Some of them were in the Riker collection. They were hardly what you’d call dolls, although some of them were green. To the more educated Hindus they have become symbolic.”

“You mean like our sandman?” asked Judy with a yawn.

Peter laughed. “I never thought of it that way, but I guess the sandman is a symbol of sleep, and you and I could use some of it. We can look through the rest of these old magazines another time.”

“It’s no use. It isn’t here. We’d better go down.”

Judy picked up Buttercup, her favorite doll. “I’m going to tuck her in bed with Penny,” she told Peter, “so she’ll find her when she wakes up.”

She laughed at Peter’s objections as she carried the doll down to the children’s bedroom on the second floor and placed her in Penny’s arms.

“You see, I didn’t wake Penny,” she whispered to Peter. “Isn’t she an angel? I wish—”

The wish went unexpressed as Judy pounced upon the very magazine she had been hunting for. It was on the little night table right by Penny’s bed, and it was open to the big fold-out page covered with pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses.

“Go ahead! You can take it,” Paul said so suddenly that he startled Judy and nearly made her drop the magazine.

He was wide awake in the other bed.

“Where did you find it?” Judy whispered.

“In the closet. I was showing Penny the pictures. Is it almost morning?”

“Almost,” Judy told him. “Now go back to sleep. I’d better follow my own advice,” she said to Peter when they were in their own room.

“Are you going to take that magazine to bed with you?” he asked.

Judy still had it in her arms.

“Why not?” she retorted, making a face at him. “It contains all the mysterious secrets of the mysterious East and if I want to solve this mysterious—”

“Darling,” Peter interrupted, “if I hear that word again I shall place a blindfold over your mysterious gray eyes—”

“Try it!” she challenged him.

Judy won the scuffle. In spite of Peter’s protests, she began to read the article, though not from the beginning. She had opened the magazine to a huge picture of Shiva.

“This,” she pointed out, “is Shiva or Siva, the death god or the Destroyer. I recognized the figure on the tomb from this picture. But Penny mentioned the name Sita, and that seems to ring a bell, too.”

“It should.” Peter turned the page and spread it out before her. “Here they are,” he said. “Rama and Sita are the ideal man and woman in India. They should never be separated, and no marriage is complete without their blessing—”

“That’s rather sweet, don’t you think? Oh!” Judy gasped, pointing to one of the two little idols pictured. “Look, Peter. This is the one I found in the vault. Our green doll is Rama!”