"A secret drawer!" cried Cricket, excitedly. "Oh, grandma! how book-y!"
"Yes. Grandpa brought this table from China, years ago. It is full of secret places."
Cricket touched the spring, and the supposed bottom flew up, showing a box below. The little stand was really more of a cabinet than a table, though it had a flat top and rolled easily on its castors. In the box thus opened were all sorts of things.
"They are all old keepsakes," said grandma. "Find something you want to hear about."
Cricket lifted a string of oddly carved beads.
"This, grandma. Isn't it funny? Has it an interesting story?"
Grandma took the beads in her hands, thoughtfully.
"It's an old keepsake, to be sure, and I used to be very fond of it when I was a girl, and I wore it a good deal, but I don't know that there is any story connected with it. But I'll tell you how I got it. It taught me a bit of a lesson. I'll tell you the story, and you can guess the lesson for yourself, if you can.
"You know I lived in Boston when I was a girl. I went to a private school there, of, perhaps, twenty girls. It was kept by Miss Sarah and Miss Abbie Cartwright. We all loved Miss Sarah, but none of us liked Miss Abbie, and I don't wonder at it when I think how little she understood girls.
"We used to recite seated in a semi-circle around the teacher, and all whispering was strictly forbidden during the recitation. One day—but I must stop here, and tell you that we all wore white stockings and low shoes then. We never had any high shoes at all. Our white stockings must always be fresh and clean, of course, and I always put on a clean pair every day. A soiled stocking would have made us feel simply disgraced. Coloured stockings were perfectly unknown as far as I remember, and I should have felt dreadfully mortified to wear anything but white."