Page:Poor Cecco - 1925.djvu/168

150 narrow, so Tubby had hard work to squeeze herself along. It began to smell musty and wormy, too; evidently no one had used it for a long while. But Tubby wriggled on, for she was bound to see what lay at the end.

Soon it grew lighter. There was a small knothole in the wall, near the end of the passage, and as soon as Tubby caught sight of this she thought: “Now I can post my letter at last!” And pulling the letter from her pocket she poked it through the knothole and let it fall.

As she turned round she bumped against something sharp. It was the corner of a box that had been pushed into a hollow right at the end of the passage. It was wedged there so tightly, covered over with dust and cobwebs, that Tubby had difficulty in pulling it out. But she managed it at last, and saw scratched on the lid the initials T. L.

“That’s for Tubbyland,” thought Tubby. “Perhaps there are chocolates in!” And lifting up the lid she looked inside.

There were no chocolates in, but there was something far more interesting. There was, first of all, a gold thimble, and then a silver dime with a hole in it, and a bit of tinsel and some red worsted, and a ring with a bright green stone, and a bit of broken looking-glass and three safety-pins and a gilt watch and chain, just the right size for Poor Cecco. And when she had pulled all these things out, there, folded away at the bottom, under some scraps of coloured paper