Aunt P. Oh, no, not very soon.
Amos. Yes, soon, very soon. Good land, Polly, isn’t forty years long enough?
Aunt P. But what had you to do with this, Pauline? And where has that letter been all these years?
Pauline. Why, you see, Auntie, when I put the old valentines away I dropped one, and when I tried to open the drawer it stuck. I jerked it hard, to open it, and when it opened—— (Opens drawer.) Look! That’s what I saw, and the letter was on top.
Aunt P. Why, how did that box come there? It looks like a drawer.
Amos (pulling the drawer out, and looking in). It was, Polly, a secret drawer, just above this one. Evidently this had to be taken entirely out to reach it, but one support has come loose, so it dropped into the other drawer.
Aunt P. (taking secret drawer in her lap). I never knew there was a secret drawer in this table. Why, Amos! They’re Grandmother’s things! The ones we never could find! Here’s her gold beads, and her gold thimble, and Grandpa’s watch, and—this was Uncle Robert’s little shoe—he died, you know, when he was a year old—and this box is full of hair—Father’s curls, I do believe! That’s all. No. (Lifts paper in bottom of drawer.) This is her marriage certificate! We knew there was a secret drawer in the desk, where she kept money. She showed that to Father about a year before she died. But this—and how did my valentine get there? How did Grandma get it before it was mailed?
Amos. That’s plain enough. She ran in that morning to show Mother a new patch-work pattern. The letter lay on the desk, and she chaffed me about it. Then she offered to play Cupid, and put it into your own hand. Thinking you would get it earlier that way, I consented. So when I called that night, and you were not at home, I thought it was a kind way of saying no, and went away to get over it. I couldn’t, though, and came back a year later, as you know. But why your grandmother didn’t give it to you, I don’t see. She was always a woman to trust.
Aunt P. I understand that part of it. When she got home I had gone with Tim, and it was that night she had a shock, Amos. She never spoke again, and died a week later.
Amos. And if I hadn’t run away on the first train the next morning I would have known it, and might have mistrusted that you didn’t get it! Oh, the years that the locusts have eaten! That was one of her own expressions, you remember.