The Boarded-Up House Read Online Free PDF

dinner-party and didn’t stay over another night. ’Cause why? Most of their beds are made, and they left everything in a muss down-stairs. But come along. This isn’t particularly interesting. I want to get to the other end of the hall. Something different’s over there!” They turned and retraced their steps, emerging from the servants’ quarters and passing again the rooms they had already; examined.
    On the other side of the main hall they entered an apartment that was not a bedroom, but appeared to have been used as a sitting-room and for sewing. An old-fashioned sewing-table stood near one window. Two chairs and another table were heaped with material and with garments in various stages of completion. An open work-box held dust-covered spools. But still there was nothing special in the room to challenge interest, and Joyce pulled her companion across the hall toward another partially open door.
    They had scarcely been in it long enough to illuminate it with the pale flames of their candles, before they realized that they were very near the heart of the mystery. It was another bedroom, the largest so far, and its aspect was very different from that of the others. The high four-poster was tossed and tumbled, not, however, as if by a night’s sleep, but more as if some one had lain upon it just as it was, twisting and turning restlessly. Two trunks stood on the floor, open and partially packed. One seemed to contain household linen, once fine and dainty and white, now yellowed and covered with the dust of years. The other brimmed with clothing, a woman’s, all frills and laces and silks; and a great hoop-skirt, collapsed, lay on the floor alongside. Neither of the girls could, for the moment, guess what it was, this queer arrangement of wires and tape. But Joyce went over and picked it up, when it fell into shape as she held it at arm’s-length. Then they knew.
    â€œI have an idea!” cried Joyce. “This hoop-skirt, or crinoline, I think they used to call it, gave it to me. Cynthia, we must be in the room belonging to the lovely lady whose picture hangs in the library.”
    â€œHow do you know?” queried Cynthia.
    â€œI don’t know, I just suspect it. But perhaps we will find something that proves it later.” She held the candle over one of the trunks and peered in. “Dresses, hats, waists,” she enumerated. “Oh, how queer and old-fashioned they all seem!” Suddenly, with a little cry of triumph, she leaned over and partially pulled out an elaborate silk dress.
    â€œLook! look! what did I tell you! Here is the very dress of the picture-lady, this queer, changeable silk, these big sleeves, and the velvet sewed on in a funny criss-cross pattern! Now will you believe me?”
    Truly, Cynthia could no longer doubt. It was the identical dress, beyond question. The portrait must have been painted when the garment was new. They felt that at last they had taken a long step in the right direction by thus identifying this room as belonging to the lovely lady of the portrait down-stairs. Joy grew so excited that she could hardly contain a “hurrah,” and Cynthia was not far behind her in enthusiasm. But the room had further details to be examined.
    An open fireplace showed traces of letters having been torn up and burned. Little, half-charred scraps with faint writing still lay scattered on the hearth. On the dressing-table, articles of the toilet were littered about, and a pair of candlesticks were set close to the mirror, (There were, by the way, no traces of candles about the house. Mice had doubtless carried off every vestige of such, long since.) A great wardrobe stood in one corner, the open doors of which revealed some garments still hanging on the pegs, woolen dresses mostly, reduced now to little more than rags through the ravages of moths and mice and time. Near the bed stood a pair of dainty, high-heeled satin slippers, forgotten