"You can hardly blame it," said Bob. "It is a melancholy trunk. I never saw anything else so bald as it is in spots. It ought to have a skullcap, or we might throw a buffalo robe over it—it might think its own hair had grown out again."
"You're as silly as I am, Bobby," said Happie approvingly, as she tried first one, then another of the keys without any result. "I thought it would open like—like sesame! But it doesn't seem so easy, after all."
"It looks as if a door-key would be about the right thing," said Bob, kneeling to squint into the lock. "Let me try it. I don't like to force the poor old thing; time has been hard enough on it without our being violent. I'll try this key, and if everything else fails, I believe wire will do the trick, for it is far from a Yale lock." Everything else did fail, so Bob twisted a wire and picked the lock, "in a manner worthy the Robber Baron," Happie said.
Bob threw back the lid impressively. "Behold the treasures of The Last of the Bittenbenders!" he cried melodramatically, stepping back a pace.
The girls crowded around to see what was revealed, Laura shivering with the combination of cold and excitement.
"Let Gretta take out the contents," said Happie. "We must do everything decently and in order, and we mustn't forget that she is the most in order of any of us. When it comes to Bittenbender things, she's the family representative."
"I won't be jealous of any one who wants that place," laughed Gretta, kneeling before the trunk nevertheless. "I'm not anxious to be mixed up with the Bittenbenders; they are not one bit relation to me, I'm proud to say."
"Never mind genealogy just now, Gretta; show us what's in the trunk. If Happie says you must, you must—her word is always law somehow," said Bob.
"Because her words are Happie-thought words," smiled Margery.