The Palace Beautiful | Page 9

the vegetable kingdom; but though Hannah found her small kitchen rather dull, and never during the years she stayed with them developed the slightest taste for the beauties of Nature, she was sincerely attached to the Mainwaring girls, and took care to serve them well.
Upstairs were two bedrooms--one looking to the street, in which the girls slept, the prettiest room with the garden view being reserved for Mrs. Mainwaring. Hannah occupied a small and attic-like apartment over the kitchen.
When Jasmine ran into the garden Primrose slowly rose from her seat and went upstairs. It occurred to her that this was a fitting opportunity to do something which she longed and dreaded to accomplish.
Since her mother's death, since the moment when the three young girls had bent over the coffin and strewed flowers over the form they loved, the sisters had not gone near this room.
Hannah had dusted it and kept it tidy, but the blinds had been drawn down and the sun excluded. The girls had shrunk from entering this chamber; it seemed to them like a grave. They passed it with reverent steps, and spoke in whispers as they stole on tiptoe by the closed door.
It occurred, however, to Primrose that now was an opportunity when she might come into the room and put some of her mother's treasures straight. She unlocked the door and entered; a chill, cold feeling struck on her. Had she been Jasmine she would have turned and fled, but being Primrose, she instantly did what her clear common sense told her was the sensible course.
"We have made up our minds to go on as usual," she said to herself; "and letting in the sunlight and the daylight is not forgetting our dear mother."
Then she pulled up the blinds, and threw the window-sashes wide open.
A breath of soft warm air from the garden instantly filled the dreary chamber, and Primrose, sitting down by an old-fashioned little cabinet, slipped a key into the lock of the centre drawer, and opened it.
Mrs. Mainwaring had been by no means a tidy or careful person--she hated locks, and seemed to have a regular aversion to neatly-kept drawers or wardrobes, but this one little cabinet, which had belonged to the girls' father, was a remarkable exception to the general rule.
Mrs. Mainwaring never, even to Primrose, parted with the key of this cabinet. Whenever the girls were present it was locked--even Daisy could not coax mother to show her the contents of any of those tempting little drawers--"only mementoes, darling--only mementoes," the lady would say, but the girls knew that mother herself often in the dead of night looked into the locked drawers, and they generally noticed that the next day she was weaker and sadder than usual.
On the top of the cabinet a miniature painting of Captain Mainwaring was always to be found, and the girls used to love to keep a vase of the choicest flowers close to father's picture.
When Mrs. Mainwaring died, Jasmine cried nearly the whole of one night at the thought of the little old-fashioned cabinet--for now she felt quite sure that no one would ever dare to open it, "and I don't like to think of the mementoes being never seen again," she sobbed: "It seems cruel to them."
Then Primrose promised to undertake this dreaded task, and here was her opportunity.
Primrose was not at all a nervous girl, and with the soft summer air filling the chamber, and driving out all the ghosts of solitude and gloom, she commenced her task. She determined to look through the contents of the little cabinet with method, and she resolved to begin with the large centre drawer. She pulled it open, and was surprised to find that it was nearly empty.
A few papers, on which verses and quotations from Books of Sermons were copied in her mother's hand-writing, lay about; these, and one parcel which was carefully wrapped up in soft white tissue-paper, were the sole contents of the centre drawer. Primrose pulled the parcel from where it lay half-hidden at the back of the drawer. She felt self-possessed, but her fingers trembled slightly as she touched it. It was folded up most carefully--the wrappings were kept in their place by white satin ribbon, and on a slip of white paper which had been placed on the top of the parcel, and secured by the ribbon, Primrose read a few words:
"Arthur's little desk--for Primrose now."
She felt her color coming high, and her heart beating. Who was Arthur?--she had never heard of him--her father's name had been John. Who was the unknown Arthur, whose desk was now given to her?
She untied the parcel slowly, but with shaking fingers.
The little desk was a battered one, ink-stained, and of a slight and cheap construction. Inside it contained one treasure, a thick