“’Cause Janet’s inside!”
“Janet inside that trunk?” cried Mrs. Martin. “What sort of game is that you are playing? You shouldn’t have shut Janet up in a trunk.”
“I didn’t, Mother!” Teddy answered. “She got in herself and——”
But this delay was too much for Janet. She could hear the talk between her mother and Teddy. She could also hear Trouble shuffling around the attic floor. And Janet called:
“Oh, let me out! Let me out! I’m smothering!”
Mrs. Martin did not stop to ask any more questions. She fairly leaped across the floor and, catching hold of the trunk cover, tried to lift it up. But it would not come.
“It’s caught!” explained Teddy. “That’s why Jan couldn’t get it up.”
For a fearful moment or two Mrs. Martin feared that the trunk had locked with a spring catch. And she was alarmed lest there be no key to fit it, or that the key could not be found. In that case they would have to chop the trunk open to get Janet out.
But when Mrs. Martin looked at the lock of the trunk she saw that it was merely caught, and not fastened with a spring catch. In an instant she pulled the piece of brass forward and then, with Ted’s help, she raised the lid of the trunk.
There was Janet, all crumpled up, lying on a pile of old-fashioned dresses. The little Curlytop girl’s face was very red, and it was dirty where she had cried and then rubbed her hands over her cheeks, her hands being soiled with dust from the old spinning wheels.