He tried the key.

Thank goodness! It turned without too much noise, and he found himself on the threshold of a big lumber-room, his candle throwing lines of dusty light across it.

He closed the door, set down the light, and looked round him in despair.

The room was crowded with furniture, trunks, and boxes, in considerable confusion.

It looked as though the men employed to move them had piled them there as they pleased; and Roger shrewdly suspected that his mother, from whom, in spite of her square and business-like appearance, his own indolence was inherited, had shrunk till now from the task of disturbing them.
He began to rummage a little.