"You know you must never come into upstairs rooms without knocking at the door first, don't you, darling?"
A rule that Lily had known and had been made to observe, since she was three years old.
It appeared, therefore, that there was some urgent necessity for enforcing the rule now. Lily discovered that the door of the Blue Room was locked, all of a sudden.
She felt a strange inability to question her father or mother, but she tried to entrap Miss Cleeve into an admission, unconsciously imitating the air of carelessness with which Eleanor had tried, as Lily dimly felt, to entrap her into asking some question, to which a reply might be given that would direct curiosity into an innocuous channel leading nowhere.
"Oh, Miss Cleeve! Did you know the door of the Blue Room had been locked?"
Lily gave a high-pitched, nervous giggle. "Perhaps the key's been lost!"
Miss Cleeve threw her a very sharp glance of which Lily pretended to be quite unaware.
"Really, dear," she said in a very even voice. "Keys sometimes are lost, you know. But there's nothing to take you to the Blue Room, that I know of."
"Nurse goes in there sometimes. I've seen her coming out."
"I daresay she likes to see that it's kept dusted and tidy," said Miss Cleeve, in a preternaturally calm voice. "Now run and wash your hands for lunch, dear."