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Several milking-pails of wood, scoured to a spotless whiteness, were ranged on each side, while nicely kept strainers hung over them. There was a faint, pure smell of the dairy near, as if the porch opened to a butter and cheese-room; but the exquisite cleanliness of everything around made this rather agreeable than otherwise.
So however it proved to be; for as I came in, soon after dark, my sister Eliza met me at the corner of the cheese-room, and she said, "Don't go in there, John," pointing to mother's room; "until I have had a talk with you." "In the name of Moses," I inquired, having picked up that phrase at Dulverton; "what are you at about me now? There is no peace for a quiet fellow."
'You can be so calm about it, can ye? Be my arrangements nothing, then, that you should break 'em up, and say off hand what wasn't done to-day might ha' been done to-morrow, and such flick-flack? Out o' my sight! I won't hear any more. I won't speak to 'ee any more. 'I'll go away, and then you'll be sorry! 'Very well, go. Sorry not I. He turned and stamped his way into the cheese-room.
Yet there were sometimes strange acoustical effects as when there came a low tapping at the shutters, enough to make your heart stand still. There was then nothing for it but to dash through the doorway into the empty cheese-room adjoining, which was better lighted.
Gilfil to see the neatest house, and drink the best cup o' tea, in all Shepperton; you must show her your dairy and your cheese-room, and then she shall sing you a song." An' so she did; an' her voice seemed sometimes to fill the room; an' then it went low an' soft, as if it was whisperin' close to your heart like. 'You never heared her again, I reckon?
She ran out of the cheese-room, through the kitchen and sitting-room, to her aunt's bedroom, and opened the bureau drawer, and then the satin-wood box. It contained some bits of old lace, an old brooch, a yellow letter, some other things which she did not examine, and, sure enough, a little black key on a green ribbon. Letitia had not a doubt that it was the key of the little green door.
She had been so frightfully punished for disobedience, that she dared not risk a second attempt. Then too how could she tell whether the second little green door would admit her to her grandmother's cheese-room? She felt so dizzy over what had happened, that she was not even sure that two and two made four, and b-o-y spelt boy, although she had mastered such easy facts long ago.
"All at once she took a dislike to the man, and when he came to the house, she would always find something to busy herself about, up stairs, or in the cheese-room. The painter seemed to feel this, and after awhile it was as much as I could do to get him into the house.
She laid down her Bible and stole out through the kitchen to the cheese-room and tried the door. It was locked just as usual. "Oh, dear!" sighed Letitia, and was ready to cry. It seemed to her that this little green door was the very worst of all her trials; that she would rather open that and see what was beyond than have all the nice things she wanted and had to do without.
Letitia whispered forcibly, "Through a little green door in my Great-aunt Peggy's cheese-room." "Had she told you never to open it?" "Yes, but she and Hannah left me alone when they went to meeting and I found the key in a little box, and the key had a green ribbon and it unlocked the door, and I was in the woods around here, and Aunt Peggy's house was gone and everything."
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