was,
standing and letting the precious minutes slip by! Whether 'findings' of
this sort could, morally speaking, be considered 'keepings,' was a point
that did not occur to me.

The room was very still as I approached the bureau; possessed, it seemed
to be, by a sort of hush of expectation. The faint odour of orris-root
that floated forth as I let down the flap, seemed to identify itself
with the yellows and browns of the old wood, till hue and scent were of
one quality and interchangeable. Even so, ere this, the pot-pourri had
mixed itself with the tints of the old brocade, and brocade and
pot-pourri had long been one. With expectant fingers I explored the
empty pigeon-holes and sounded the depths of the softly-sliding
drawers. No books that I knew of gave any general recipe for a quest
like this; but the glory, should I succeed unaided, would be all the
greater.

To him who is destined to arrive, the fates never fail to afford, on the
way, their small encouragements. In less than two minutes, I had come
across a rusty button-hook. This was truly magnificent. In the nursery
there existed, indeed, a general button-hook, common to either sex; but
none of us possessed a private and special button-hook, to lend or to
refuse as suited the high humour of the moment. I pocketed the treasure
carefully, and proceeded. At the back of another drawer, three old
foreign stamps told me I was surely on the highroad to fortune.

Following on these bracing incentives, came a dull blank period of
unrewarded search. In vain I removed all the drawers and felt over every
inch of the smooth surfaces, from front to back. Never a knob, spring or
projection met the thrilling finger-tips; unyielding the old bureau
stood, stoutly guarding its secret, if secret it really had. I began to
grow weary and disheartened. This was not the first time that Uncle
Thomas had proved shallow, uninformed, a guide into blind alleys where
the echoes mocked you. Was it any good persisting longer? Was anything
any good whatever? In my mind I began to review past disappointments,
and life seemed one long record of failure and of non-arrival.
Disillusioned and depressed, I left my work and went to the window. The
light was ebbing from the room, and seemed outside to be collecting
itself on the horizon for its concentrated effort of sunset. Far down
the garden, Uncle Thomas was holding Edward in the air reversed, and
smacking him. Edward, gurgling hysterically, wa