“We must share the desk now, Jannet,” said the elder Jannet. “It is a shame to take it partly away from you. Your cousin has been telling me how delighted you were with the room and its furniture.”
“I’d much rather have a mother than a desk,” lovingly said Jannet, “but I must tell you about finding the pearls,—and losing them again!”
“What do you mean, child?” Mrs. Eldon laid down her pen and turned to her daughter.
To her astonished mother Jannet related the story and opened the secret drawer by way of illustration. This time the drawer came out most easily, and both Jannets exclaimed in surprise. In their case, as beautiful as ever, the shining pearls lay before them!
“Why Jannet!”
“Mother! There must be something queer about that desk! Take them,—quick!”
As if she were afraid that they would vanish before their eyes, Jannet gathered pearls and case and placed them in her mother’s hands. “Oh, you shall wear them the next time you sing!”
Jannet stood looking at her mother, who was turning over the pearls. Then she examined the drawer. “I have an idea, Mother,” she said. “I think that somebody fixed this with a sort of false bottom. I did something before I opened the drawer that time I found them, and I think that I must have done it again when I closed it, or some time before the time, they were gone.
“See this little worn place, with the wood that gives a little? There is a spring under that and it lets down things or brings them up again, perhaps.”
Mrs. Eldon looked doubtfully at Jannet, but Jannet dropped her own fountain pen into the drawer, closed it, and pressed the place to which she had referred. Then she pressed the spring which opened the drawer. No fountain pen was in sight. Again Jannet closed the drawer. Again she pressed the wood. Again she pressed the spring, and the drawer came out. There lay the fountain pen.