"Why don't you lie down?" said Janet.
Babie did lie down, but on her back, her head high up on the pillow,
and her eyes well open still.
Perhaps Janet did not like it, for she gave an impatient shuffle to
the papers, shut the drawer with a jerk, locked it, took up her
candle, and went away without vouchsafing a "good-night."
Babie lay wondering. She knew that the davenport contained all that
was most sacred and precious to her mother, as relics of her old
life, and that only dire necessity would have made her let anyone
touch it. What could Janet mean? To speak would be of no use. One-
and-twenty was not likely to listen to thirteen, though Babie, in her
dreamy wakefulness, found herself composing conversations in which
she made eloquent appeals to Janet, which she was never likely to
utter.
At last the morning twitterings began outside, doves cooed, peacocks
miawed, light dawned, and Babie's perceptions cleared themselves. In
the wainscoted room was a large closet, used for hanging up cloaks
and dresses, and fortunately empty. No sooner did the light begin to
reflect itself in its polished oak-panelled door, than an idea struck
Babie, and bounding from her bed, she opened the door, wheeled in the
davenport, shut it in, turned the big rusty key with both hands and a
desperate effort, then repairing to her own little inner room,
disturbed the honourable retirement of the last and best-beloved of
her dolls in a pink-lined cradle in a disused doll's house, and
laying the key beneath the mattress, felt heroically ready for the
thumbscrew rather than yield it up.
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