Part I.—Netta, the Make-Believer
Netta's father one day picked her up, swung her into the air, and put her down on the top of the high Italian cabinet in the hall. "There, you little slut," he said, "what does the world look like from up there?"
"Quite different; you wouldn't know it. The pictures look so queer—upside down; and the staircase isn't the same—or anything. Can't you come up too?"
"No; I'm afraid."
"Did you know there were two—no, three—big rings up here on the top of the cabinet? You can't see them from down below. May I bring them down?"
"If you like."
They were three disused wooden curtain rings, very dusty.
"How did they get there?" asked Netta.
"That," said her father, "is one of the things that I do not know; ask somebody else."
So she asked her mother, her governess, her nurse, and all the servants. They also did not know. They supposed that somebody must have put them there some time. Netta went back to her father and obtained permission to have those rings for her own. She carried them out into the garden into a secluded place under a weeping ash. There she examined the rings very carefully, and thought about the mystery which surrounded them. When she took them upstairs she showed them to her nurse.