Lyddy only said, occasionally, that it was odd Aunt Jane had not sent the key to the green door when she expressed all the other keys to her nieces when the project of keeping boarders at Hillcrest was first broached.
At these times ’Phemie had kept as still as a mouse. Sometimes the key was worn on a string around her neck; sometimes it was concealed in a cunning little pocket she had sewn into her skirt. But wherever it was, it always seemed–to ’Phemie–to be burning a hole in her garments and trying to make its appearance.
After finding Professor Spink filling the bottles with water up by Pounder’s Brook, the girl was more than usually troubled about the east wing and the mystery.
She moved the key about from place to place. One day she wore it; another she hid it in some corner. And finally, one night when she came to go to bed, she found that the cord on which she had worn the key that day was broken and the key was gone.
She screamed so loud at this discovery that her sister was sure she had seen a mouse, and she bounded into bed, half dressed as she was.
“Where–where is it, ’Phemie?” she gasped, for Lyddy was as afraid of mice as she was of rats.
“Oh, mercy me!” wailed ’Phemie, “that’s what I’d like to know.”
“Didn’t you see it?” cried her trembling sister.
“It’s gone!” returned ’Phemie.
Lyddy got gingerly down from the bed.