Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/84

72 I wished Emily would not speak in that stammering way, as if there was a full stop between each word or two. But I knew it was not the slightest use my saying so just then; that was how she felt.

“Of course. I did leave that bangle on the table, didn’t I? That’s one thing which we’ve found in uncle’s dear old house which seems worth having; and one thing’s something. Let’s go and have another look at it.”

Down the stairs again we went; Emily sticking close to my side as if she would rather have suffered anything than have let me get a yard away from her. One of the pleasantest features of my new possession seemed to be that every time we moved from one room to another about a hundred thousand rats got flurried; it sounded like a hundred thousand by the din they made. And Emily did not like them scurrying up and down the stairs when she was on them; nor, so far as that went, did I either.

When we reached the parlour, I made a dart at the table.

“Why, where’s that bangle? I put it down just there, I remember most distinctly. Emily, it’s gone! Whatever’s this? I do believe—it’s that back-door key!”

It was, at any rate, a key; and bore a family likeness to the one which was attached to the chain which was about my waist. I stared, scarcely able to credit the evidence of my own senses. Between our going from that room and our returning to it a miracle had happened; a transformation had taken place; a bangle—and such a bangle! had become a key. Apparently the back-door key of Uncle Benjamin’s “P.S.!”