The Green Door | Page 2

but she always seemed both
cross and stupid, and gave her no satisfaction. She even seemed to
think there was no little green door there; but that was nonsense,
because Letitia knew there was. Her curiosity grew greater and greater;
she took every chance she could get to steal into the cheese-room and
shake the door softly, but it was always locked. She even tried to look
through the key-hole, but she could see nothing. One thing puzzled her
more than all, and that was that the little green door was on the inside
of the house only, and not on the outside. When Letitia went out in the
field behind the house, there was nothing but the blank wall to be seen.
There was no sign of a door in it. But the cheese-room was certainly the

last room in the house, and the little green door was in the rear wall.
When Letitia asked her Great-aunt Peggy to explain that, she only got
the same answer:
"It is not best for you to know, my dear."
Letitia studied the little green door more than she studied her
lesson-books, but she never got any nearer the solution of the mystery,
until one Sunday morning in January. It was a very cold day, and she
had begged hard to stay home from church. Her Aunt Peggy and the
maid-servant, old as they were, were going, but Letitia shivered and
coughed a little and pleaded, and finally had her own way.
"But you must sit down quietly," charged Aunt Peggy, "and you must
learn your texts, to repeat to me when I get home."
After Aunt Peggy and the old servant, in their great cloaks and bonnets
and fur tippets, had gone out of the yard and down the road, Letitia sat
quiet for fifteen minutes or so, hunting in the Bible for easy texts; then
suddenly she thought of the little green door, and wondered, as she had
done so many times before, if it could possibly be opened. She laid
down her Bible and stole out through the kitchen to the cheese-room
and tried the door. It was locked just as usual. "Oh, dear!" sighed
Letitia, and was ready to cry. It seemed to her that this little green door
was the very worst of all her trials; that she would rather open that and
see what was beyond than have all the nice things she wanted and had
to do without.
Suddenly she thought of a little satin-wood box with a picture on the lid
which Aunt Peggy kept in her top bureau-drawer. Letitia had often seen
this box, but had never been allowed to open it.
"I wonder if the key can be in that box," said she.
She did not wait a minute. She was so naughty that she dared not wait
for fear she should remember that she ought to be good. She ran out of
the cheese-room, through the kitchen and sitting-room, to her aunt's
bedroom, and opened the bureau drawer, and then the satin-wood box.

It contained some bits of old lace, an old brooch, a yellow letter, some
other things which she did not examine, and, sure enough, a little black
key on a green ribbon.
Letitia had not a doubt that it was the key of the little green door. She
trembled all over, she panted for breath, she was so frightened, but she
did not hesitate. She took the key and ran back to the cheese-room. She
did not stop to shut the satin-wood box or the bureau drawer. She was
so cold and her hands shook so that she had some difficulty in fitting
the key into the lock of the little green door; but at last she succeeded,
and turned it quite easily. Then, for a second, she hesitated; she was
almost afraid to open the door; she put her hand on the latch and drew
it back. It seemed to her, too, that she heard strange, alarming sounds
on the other side. Finally, with a great effort of her will, she unlatched
the little green door, and flung it open and ran out.
Then she gave a scream of surprise and terror, and stood still staring.
She did not dare stir nor breathe. She was not in the open fields which
she had always seen behind the house. She was in the midst of a
gloomy forest of trees so tall that she could just see the wintry sky
through their tops. She was hemmed in, too, by a wide, hooping
undergrowth of bushes and brambles, all stiff with snow. There was
something dreadful and ghastly about this forest, which had the
breathless odor of a cellar. And suddenly Letitia heard again those
strange sounds she had heard before