ouse.

"No, I don't remember that your mother ever asked about any little
room," said Hannah. "She didn't seem very well that summer, but she
never asked about any changes in the house; there hadn't ever been any
changes."

There it was again: not sign of interest, curiosity, or annoyance, not
a spark of memory.

She went out to Hiram. He was telling Mr. Grant about the farm. She had
meant to ask him about the room, but her lips were sealed before her
husband.

Months afterwards, when time had lessened the sharpness of their
feelings, they learned to speculate reasonably about the phenomenon,
which Mr. Grant had accepted as something not to be scoffed away, not to
be treated as a poor joke, but to be put aside as something inexplicable
on any ordinary theory.

Margaret alone in her heart knew that her mother's words carried a
deeper significance than she had dreamed of at the time. "One thing I am
glad of, your father knows now," and she wondered if Roger or she would
ever know.

Five years later they were going to Europe. The packing was done; the
children were lying asleep, with their travelling things ready to be
slipped on for an early start.

Roger had a foreign appointment. They were not to be back in America for
some years. She had meant to go up to say good-by to her aunts; but a
mother of three children intends to do a great many things that never
get done. One thing she had done that very day, and as she paused for a
moment between the writing of two notes that must be posted before she
went to bed, she said:

"Roger, you remember Rita Lash? Well, she and Cousin Nan go up to the
Adirondacks every autumn. They are clever girls, and I have intrusted to
them something I want done very much."

"They are the girls to do it, then, every inch of them."

"I know it, and they are going to."

"Well?"

"Why, you see, Roger, that little room--"

"Oh--"

"Yes, I was a coward not to go myself, but I didn't find time, because I
hadn't the courage."

"Oh! _that_ was it, was it?"

"Yes, just that. They are going, and they will write us about it."

"Want to bet?"

"No; I only want to know."

* * * * *

Rita Lash and Cousin Nan planned to go to Vermont on their way to the
Adirondacks. They found they would have three hours between trains,
which would give them time to drive up to the Keys farm, and they could
still get to the camp that night. But, at the last minute, Ri