"And I dare say you're pretty well accustomed to being left alone by this time. You must be nearly a hundred years old, though you look so young," said Gerald, as he bowed to her. I could not help laughing, though Tib was rather vexed.
"I wish you wouldn't think it clever to turn everything into ridicule, Gerald," but he looked up with such a surprised face that we saw he hadn't been in fun at all.
"There's one thing we'd better do if we want ever to get in here again," I said. "We must hide the key of the door leading from the passage. I dare say the person who comes to dust will never notice it's not there. They can't be in the habit of locking it regularly; but it's as well to hide it," and so saying, I took the key out of the lock and slipped it inside a drawer of one of the big cabinets, where it may be lying still, for all I know (I must look, by the by: writing this all out has reminded me of several things I had forgotten).
Then we closed the door carefully and ran down the passage to the conservatory again, where we found everything just as we had left it—our key, as we called it, sticking in the lock inside. It was still rather stiff to turn—and the next morning we oiled it again—but we managed to unlock it, and then to lock the door again on the outside.
And Gerald ran off with the key to hide it again in the summer-house; only we wrapped it up in paper before burying it in the fir dust.
"Who would have thought," said Tib, as we ran in, "who could have thought, what we should find this afternoon?"
But our surprises, as you shall hear, were not yet at an end.