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!”