"Tell me all about her!"
So, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the almost empty trunk, Renée described Susette and the cottage at St. Cloud and the wonderful flowers that had used to sell so well before the war, and the school where she had gone after her mother had died; how she and Emile always talked in English because her mother had made them promise, and how in the long, anxious, lonely days after Emile had gone, she had used to teach simple English words to Susette as they sat together among the flowers that nobody wanted to buy!
From the bottom of the trunk Renée drew a box covered with worn leather, tooled and colored like the binding of a beautiful book. So old was it that the colors blended and looked all blue and gold and green. Renée lifted it tenderly, as though it was precious!
"Oh, how queer and how be-ut-iful!" cried Patricia, all admiration and curiosity. "What do you keep in it?"
Renée held the box very close to her.
"I don't know! It was my mother's and now it's Emile's and mine, or"--she carefully corrected herself--"I suppose it's just mine. But we don't know what is in it for we never had the key! My mother died before she could tell Emile where it was! And Emile made me promise before he went away that I would keep the box and never let anyone open it!"
"And you haven't even the teeniest idea what is in it? Didn't you ever just shake it?"
"Oh, lots of times!" confessed Renée. "But nothing makes any noise. And of course I would keep my promise to Emile."
Patricia rocked back and forth on her heels in joy.
"Oh, what a spliffy mystery! I can't wait to write to the girls!" Then she laughed at Renée's bewilderment. "Spliffy is a word we learned at Miss Prindle's and it means scrumptious or delicious or grand! Don't you love a mystery? And isn't it the lov-li-est box?"