Madge Mortons Secret | Page 7

and with the memory of her dead mother and father. With the strange
jewels in her hair and about her throat, the beautiful blue robe around
her shoulders, little country-bred Madge looked as though she might
have been a beautiful princess of the long ago.
Being free from vanity, however, she calmly folded up her silks, took
off her jewels, and turned from the window to go downstairs to show
her cousin her treasures.
At the door of the attic she paused and glanced back at the open trunk,
then, walking slowly toward it, deposited her jewel box and armful of
silks on the top of the old cedar chest and sat down before the trunk.
What strange influence drew her back to it that day Madge could never
explain. She knew only that the longing for the love of the father she
had never seen, and the mother she could not remember, was strong
within her.
"What made you leave me when I needed you so?" she murmured, half
under her breath. Then she bowed her head on the edge of the trunk and
her tears dropped on a little, old-fashioned black velvet coat that had
been her mother's. Impulsively Madge caught it up and pressed it to her
lips. After a long moment she laid it across her lap and began
smoothing it with loving hands, tenderly tracing its lines with her
forefinger. As she was about to fold it and lay it in its accustomed place
her hand came in contact with something hard in the cuff of one sleeve
between the velvet and the satin lining.
"What can it be?" she wondered, as she fingered it through the cloth. "It
feels like a key. If I break two or three stitches, I can pull it out."

It was at least five minutes before she managed to make an opening
large enough to admit the working out of the little hard object. As she
had guessed, it was a small brass key with a bit of faded violet ribbon
attached to it.
Madge looked curiously at it as it lay in her hand. To whom did the key
belong? What did it unlock? Why had her mother sewed it into the
sleeve of the black velvet coat? Or had her mother placed it there? The
little captain sighed. She could ask endless questions concerning her
find, but she could answer none of them.
"There may be a box in the trunk which I have overlooked," she
reflected. "I never do things thoroughly."
Springing from the floor, Madge ran across the attic to where her aunt
always kept a pile of brown wrapping paper. Tearing off a strip she
carried it to her corner and, laying it on the floor at one side of her
mother's trunk, sat down beside it. One by one, with reverent hands, she
lifted the various garments from it, piling them over one another on the
paper. But when the trunk, bereft of its last article, stood empty before
her, she stared in disappointment at the pile of articles at her side. There
was nothing in it that bore the slightest resemblance to a box.
"It's like 'hunting for a needle in a haystack,'" she mourned. "This key
might fit a lock thousands of miles from here. It can't be the key to the
trunk; it is too small." She bent forward to examine the lock. "No, the
key to this trunk is ever so much larger. Perhaps the trunk has a false
bottom!"
This being a positive inspiration, Madge set to work on the bottom of
the trunk, her investigations meeting with no success. She was more
disheartened than she cared to admit, even to herself, as she replaced
the contents of the trunk and, reluctantly shutting down the lid,
gathered up her treasures and went down the stairs with dragging feet.
Her pleasure in the beautiful fabrics had vanished, and the longing to
probe into the past of her dear ones was uppermost in her mind.
Her first impulse on entering the kitchen, where Eleanor and her

mother still labored with the jelly, was to show them the little key.
Then the same strange influence which had forced her to return to the
trunk kept her silent. The finding of the little key should be her secret.
Mrs. Butler and Eleanor exclaimed admiringly over the silks. It was as
though they were seeing them for the first time. Eleanor was delighted
with the prospect of possessing an evening gown of the rose color, and
the two girls were soon deep in planning the way in which they
intended having their frocks made.
"May I keep Mother's jewel box with me, Aunt Sue?" asked Madge an
hour later, as she rose to go to