"If he was my son, I'd turn him out of the house." "Father would hardly consent," replied her sister, "and if he did, what good would it do?
Horace or Travilla would take him in of course." "Well, thank heaven, Boyd and Foster are made of sterner stuff and our labor's not all lost," said Enna, returning to her machine.
The two ladies had been spending many hours every day in that room for a week past, no one but Calhoun being admitted to their secrets, for whether in the room or out of it they kept the door always carefully locked.
The curiosity of servants and children was strongly excited, but vain had been all their questions and coaxing, futile every attempt to solve the mystery up to the present time.
But three or four days after Calhoun's return from the Oaks, the thought suggested itself to mischievous, prying Dick and his coadjutor Walter, that the key of some other lock in the house might fit that of the door they so ardently desired to open.

They only waited for a favorable opportunity to test the question in the temporary absence of their mothers from that part of the building, and to their great joy discovered that the key of the bedroom they shared together was the duplicate of the one which had so long kept their masculine curiosity at bay.
It turned readily in the lock and with a smothered exclamation of delight they rushed in and glanced eagerly about.
At first they saw nothing in any way remarkable--the familiar furniture, the sewing machine, the work-table and baskets of their mothers, a few shreds of white cotton and linen, a scrap here and there of red braid littering the carpet near the machine, and the low rocking-chair used by Mrs.Conly.
"Pooh! nothing here to be so secret about," cried Walter, but Dick, nodding his head wisely said, "Let's look a little further.

What's in that closet ?" They ran to it, opened the door, and started back in sudden momentary affright.
"'Taint alive," said Dick, the bolder of the two, quickly recovering himself; "horrid thing! I reckon I know what 'tis," and he whispered a few words in his companion's ear.
Walter gave a nod of acquiescence of the opinion.
"Here's another 'most finished," pursued Dick, dragging out and examining a bundle he found lying on the closet floor.

(The one which had so startled them hung on the wall.) "We'll have some fun out of 'em one of these times when it's ready, eh, Wal ?" "Yes, but let's put 'em back, and hurry off now, for fear somebody should come and catch us.

I'm afraid those folks in the drawing-room may go, and our mothers come up to their work again." "So they might, to be sure," said Dick, rolling up the bundle and bestowing it in its former resting place.