‘I looked in the other day when she was dusting,’ said Charlotte. ‘I couldn’t see much just a bit of the carpet, pink and grey and pretty, and the corner of a black cupboard-thing with trees and birds and gold Chinamen on it, and a table with a soup tureen with red rabbits’ heads for handles, and a round looking-glass that you could see some more of the room in, all tiny and all drawn wrong somehow—you know the sort; convict mirrors, Harriet says they are. I asked her.’
‘When?’ said Charles.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Just after. And Harriet goes in to sweep it. She says its full of lovelies.’
‘Why don’t you ask her if it was shut up out of compliment to us?’ Charles asked.
‘Because I wasn’t going to put ideas into Harriet’s head, of course.’
And Caroline agreed that such a question would have been simply giving themselves away.
Each of the three C.’s had turned the handle of the drawing-room door many times to see whether by chance Mrs. Wilmington had just this once not remembered to lock it. But she always had. And their interest in the room had steadily grown. And now here was another wet day, just the day for examining golden Chinamen and looking at yourself in convex mirrors; and the room was locked up so that no one could enjoy these advantages.
Rupert was still in bed, the doctor had decided against measles; but the feverish cold which had given rise to the measle idea was still too bad for Rupert to be anywhere but where he was. And the others were only allowed to see him for a few minutes at a time. Mrs. Wilmington had, so Harriet explained, ‘taken to the new young gentleman in a way you’d hardly believe,’ and was spending the afternoon reading Masterman Ready to him after a baffled attempt to read him Eric, or Little by Little, which she fetched from her own room on purpose, and which Rupert stopped his ears with his fingers rather than listen to.
‘It is the time,’ said Charlotte; ‘there is a time in the affairs of men that they call the Nick. And this is it. Let’s try to get in. The Wilmington is safely out of the way. Let’s!’
‘Yes, let’s,’ said Charles.