Kitty worked the key this way and that. Below in the tavern kitchen Gran’s voice lifted up the words of an old hymn. Through the open window drifted the scent of garden flowers in the warm dark. Her hands got sticky with sweat. She kept dropping the wretched little key.
“Hurry!” pleaded Sally Rose. “I’m afraid he’ll come and not find me. I’m afraid he’ll go away.”
Desperately Kitty twisted the bit of metal.
“It’s no use, Sally Rose,” she said at last. “I can’t make it work. What will we do?”
“Cut the lacings, I suppose,” sighed Sally Rose, “and I’ll try to wiggle out through the gap in the middle. I don’t care much. I never should have bought it. Maybe the staymaker will take it back. Get my shears. They’re in the workbox in the top drawer.”
“But you left your workbox in the kitchen,” said Kit. “I saw it there when we were scouring the pots after supper. All the other shears and knives are there too, and if I went down, I’d have to explain to Gran.”
The two girls looked at each other in dismay. Sally Rose bit her lip. “Yes, you would,” she said. “And whatever excuse you made, she might come back upstairs with you, and then I’d never get away. Can’t you break the lacings?”
“I doubt it,” said Kitty. “It’s the toughest cord I ever saw.”
“Try.”
So Kitty yanked and tugged and twisted, but the cord refused to break. Sally Rose was hopelessly trapped.