Phyllis went and got it out from its hiding-place in her trunk, and they spent a fruitless half-hour wrestling with its secret fastening. They broke their finger-nails trying to pry it open, they pressed and poked every inch of it in an endeavor to find a possible secret spring; they rattled and shook it, rewarded in this case by the dull thud of something shifting about. It was this last sound only that kept up their courage. Finally they gave it up.
“I believe we could break it open with an ax, perhaps; but you don’t seem to approve of that, so how we’re ever going to find out, I’m sure I can’t imagine!” declared Phyllis, discouraged.
“Do you know, I think this metal is so strong it would resist even an ax,” Leslie soothed her, “and we’d only damage the box without accomplishing anything. There must be some other way. Why not show it to Ted and your father? Perhaps they could do what we can’t.”
“I will not share this secret with Ted!” declared Phyllis, obstinately. “He’s nearly nineteen and he thinks he’s the most important thing in creation, and he’s perfectly insufferable in some ways, now. To have his advice asked in this thing would set him up worse than ever. I won’t do it!”
Leslie had to smile inwardly at this outburst. To her, Ted had seemed just a jolly, agreeable, and rather companionable boy, with a very friendly, likable attitude. But she realized that she had not had Phyllis’s sisterly experience, so she said nothing more. They put the dragon back in his hiding-place and sadly admitted themselves more baffled than ever.
On the evening of the third day after this, however, a strange thing happened.
To the surprise of Leslie, Miss Marcia had been induced to walk along the beach, after supper, and stop in at Fisherman’s Luck to hear a concert—an impromptu one—given by Phyllis and her father and brother. Leslie had learned that the Kelvin family amused itself in this fashion every night when the fishing was not particularly good.
“I’d love to hear them play, shouldn’t you, Aunt Marcia? Phyllis is a wonder, just by herself, and they must make a delightful trio!” She said this without any hope that her aunt would express much interest; but to her astonishment, Miss Marcia replied:
“Well, suppose we walk down there after tea. I’m feeling so much better that I don’t believe it would hurt me, and I’m just hungry to hear some music myself!”
Leslie joyfully imparted the news to Phyllis, and they planned an elaborate program. It was an evening that they long remembered, so absorbed were they in the music that they all loved. And it was not till the end of an ensemble rendering of a Bach concerto, that some one remarked, “Why, it’s raining!”