The Palace Beautiful | Page 9

"Well, Rose, if you are
quite determined to be shabby and saving, I may as well join Daisy in
the garden."
Jasmine stooped down, kissed her sister lightly on the forehead, and
then ran out of the room. A moment or two later Primrose heard

laughing voices floating in through the open window. She was glad in
her heart that Jasmine and Daisy were beginning to do things just as
usual, and yet somehow their laughter gave her a pang.
The little cottage was a tiny place; it consisted downstairs of one long
low room, with a bay window at the extreme end. This room the
Mainwarings called the drawing-room, and it was really furnished with
great daintiness and care. At one end was the bay window, at the other
were glass doors which opened directly into the garden. The kitchen
was at the other end of the narrow hall, and this also looked on the
garden. Hannah, the one servant, was often heard to object to this
arrangement. She gave solid reasons for her objections, declaring
roundly that human nature was far more agreeable to her than any part
of 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