CHAPTER XII
THE OTHER BOOK
They found the second book. It was not so heavy as the other, but in it, too, there were only three or four pages of ladies in crinolines and gentlemen in whiskers and chokers, leaning against marble pillars with velvet curtains loosely draped in the background.
‘Be careful,’ Charlotte urged; ‘be quite ready to fly before you start it.’
But when they pressed the little catch and sprang towards the door ready to ‘fly,’ no silvery sound met the ear. In an awe-struck silence they went slowly back to the table.
And now, looking more closely, they saw that the catch was not made to press down but to slide along. Charlotte pushed it. A lid flew up, and there was a space that had perhaps once held a musical box, but now held a reel of silk, an old velvet needle-book with a view of the Isle of Wight painted on it outside, and inside, needles red with many a year’s rust; a box of beads with a glass top, a bone silk-winder, a netting needle, and a sheet of paper with some finely pencilled writing on it.
‘Bother!’ said Charles; ‘let’s start the other.’
But Charlotte was looking at the beads and Caroline was looking at the writing.
‘What jolly little different beads, not a bit like now,’ said Charlotte; and Caroline said:
‘It’s a list of books, that’s all. I say,’ she added in quite another voice, ‘that Thessalonian book is underlined, hard, I wonder why?’ She unfolded the paper and turned it over. ‘There’s another underlined, Pope’s Ill Something,’ she said.
‘Iliad,’ said Charles, looking over her shoulder. ‘I always know Latin words the minute I see them, even if I don’t know what they mean. Let’s start the other musical box.’