Madge Mortons Secret | Page 7

influence drew her back to it that day Madge could never explain. She knew only that the longing for the love of the father she had never seen, and the mother she could not remember, was strong within her.
"What made you leave me when I needed you so?" she murmured, half under her breath. Then she bowed her head on the edge of the trunk and her tears dropped on a little, old-fashioned black velvet coat that had been her mother's. Impulsively Madge caught it up and pressed it to her lips. After a long moment she laid it across her lap and began smoothing it with loving hands, tenderly tracing its lines with her forefinger. As she was about to fold it and lay it in its accustomed place her hand came in contact with something hard in the cuff of one sleeve between the velvet and the satin lining.
"What can it be?" she wondered, as she fingered it through the cloth. "It feels like a key. If I break two or three stitches, I can pull it out."
It was at least five minutes before she managed to make an opening large enough to admit the working out of the little hard object. As she had guessed, it was a small brass key with a bit of faded violet ribbon attached to it.
Madge looked curiously at it as it lay in her hand. To whom did the key belong? What did it unlock? Why had her mother sewed it into the sleeve of the black velvet coat? Or had her mother placed it there? The little captain sighed. She could ask endless questions concerning her find, but she could answer none of them.
"There may be a box in the trunk which I have overlooked," she reflected. "I never do things thoroughly."
Springing from the floor, Madge ran across the attic to where her aunt always kept a pile of brown wrapping paper. Tearing off a strip she carried it to her corner and, laying it on the floor at one side of her mother's trunk, sat down beside it. One by one, with reverent hands, she lifted the various garments from it, piling them over one another on the paper. But when the trunk, bereft of its last article, stood empty before her, she stared in disappointment at the pile of articles at her side. There was nothing in it that bore the slightest resemblance to a box.
"It's like 'hunting for a needle in a haystack,'" she mourned. "This key might fit a lock thousands of miles from here. It can't be the key to the trunk; it is too small." She bent forward to examine the lock. "No, the key to this trunk is ever so much larger. Perhaps the trunk has a false bottom!"
This being a positive inspiration, Madge set to work on the bottom of the trunk, her investigations meeting with no success. She was more disheartened than she cared to admit, even to herself, as she replaced the contents of the trunk and, reluctantly shutting down the lid, gathered up her treasures and went down the stairs with dragging feet. Her pleasure in the beautiful fabrics had vanished, and the longing to probe into the past of her dear ones was uppermost in her mind.
Her first impulse on entering the kitchen, where Eleanor and her mother still labored with the jelly, was to show them the little key. Then the same strange influence which had forced her to return to the trunk kept her silent. The finding of the little key should be her secret.
Mrs. Butler and Eleanor exclaimed admiringly over the silks. It was as though they were seeing them for the first time. Eleanor was delighted with the prospect of possessing an evening gown of the rose color, and the two girls were soon deep in planning the way in which they intended having their frocks made.
"May I keep Mother's jewel box with me, Aunt Sue?" asked Madge an hour later, as she rose to go to her room, her roll of blue silk tucked under one arm, the sandalwood box in her hand.
"Of course you may, my dear. As long as you are going to use the silks you might as well take the jewels too," sighed Mrs. Butler.
"Thank you," returned her niece, bending to kiss the older woman's cheek, then she walked quietly from the room, her cheerful face unusually sober.
"Madge is always sad after a visit to her mother's trunk," remarked Eleanor, after her cousin had gone.
Mrs. Butler nodded, her own face saddened as she went back over the years. Some day she would tell Madge the truth concerning her father and why he had never returned to the homestead, but not now. She did not wish to cast the slightest