Eve laughed. And the familiar ring of it made the strange room seem less strange. “Oh, Evey darling,” I cried, “I’m so glad you’re here. Promise you won’t go and walk out on me now.”
“Heavens, no! Why should I? I think Aunt Cal is a treasure—only she doesn’t know it. I’m going to pretend she’s my aunt too. She’s so different from Aunt Margery, and I think a variety in relations is very broadening. The thing we’ve got to do, Sandy, is to make her glad we’re here.”
“I suppose so,” I said. It was like Eve to look at things that way. Well, maybe I’d feel more optimistic in the morning, I thought. I found the key to my suitcase and went to unpack.
“Bother this lock!” I exclaimed after a few minutes of fumbling. “The key just won’t go in!”
Eve, who had already finished emptying her bag while I had been struggling, came over to help me. “Why, Sandy,” she said, “this can’t be the key, it’s too large.”
“Well, it’s the key I locked it with this morning,” I retorted impatiently. “My trunk key is flat and I haven’t any other.”
Eve shook her head puzzled. “You’d better look through your handbag anyway,” she said. “This simply can’t be the key.”
Just to satisfy her, I dumped the contents of my bag on the blue and white counterpane of the bed. There was the key to my trunk, half a bar of nut fudge wrapped in tin foil and bearing unmistakable evidences of having been sat on, my address book in which all the girls had written their summer addresses just last night, a vanity case, two rubber bands, a stub of a pencil, and a handkerchief. That was all.
“You see,” I said, “it’s just got to be the key. It can’t be anything else.”
“Then,” said Eve most surprisingly, “this isn’t your suitcase!”