“We won’t even think about the insides of the drawers,” said Fabian. He stroked the bureau too and his fingers left four long streaks on it, because he had been eating toffee.
“I suppose,” he said presently, “we may open the two bottom drawers? Mother couldn’t have made a mistake—could she?”
So they opened the two bottom drawers just to be sure that Mother hadn’t made a mistake, and to see whether there was anything in the bottom drawers that they ought not to look at.
But the bottom drawer of all had only old magazines in it. And the next to the bottom drawer had a lot of papers in it. The children knew at once by the look of the papers that they belonged to Father’s great work about the Domestic Life of the Ancient Druids, and they knew it was not right—or even interesting—to try to read other people’s papers.
So they shut the drawers and looked at each other, and Fabian said, “I think it would be right to play with the bricks and the pretty blocks that Uncle Thomas gave us.”
But Rosamund was younger than Fabian, and she said, “I am tired of the blocks, and I am tired of Uncle Thomas. I would rather look in the drawers.”
“So would I,” said Fabian. And they stood looking at the bureau.
Perhaps you don’t know what a bureau is—children learn very little at school nowadays—so I will tell you that a bureau is a kind of chest of drawers. Sometimes it has a bookcase on the top of it, and instead of the two little top corner drawers like the chests of drawers in a bedroom it has a sloping lid, and when it is quite open you pull out two little boards underneath—and then it makes a sort of shelf for people to write letters on. The shelf lies quite flat, and lets you see little drawers inside with mother of pearl handles—and a row of pigeon holes—(which are not holes pigeons live in, but places for keeping the letters carrier-pigeons could carry round their necks if they liked). And there is very often a tiny cupboard in the middle of the bureau, with a pattern on the door in different coloured woods. So now you know.
Fabian stood first on one leg and then on the other, till Rosamund said—
“Well, you might as well pull up your stockings.”