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She tied up bedclothes, and opened long-closed cupboards. She made careful piles of clothing from the attic; and finally, her mind a little tired, she sat down on the floor and began looking over papers and daguerreotypes from her father's desk. Just as she had lost herself in the ancient history of which they were the signs, there came a knock at the back door.
As most of our readers know, the long-closed house on Waverley Avenue, which for nearly a century has been in possession of the bride's family, was opened for the occasion at the express wish of the bride. For a week the preparations for this great function have been going on.
But when two senior boys take the trouble to patronise a junior and make fun of his "peculiarities," as they called his scruples, it is hardly surprising that the youngster comes out a good way to meet his patrons. Wyndham, by the way, was rather more than a youngster. He was a Limpet, and looked back on the days of fagging as a long-closed chapter of his history.
Then the girl lowered her head again, to look more carefully at the student's clothing; and as she found it all stained with blood she felt a new attack of nausea. The contrast was too sharp between the hot, sickening air of that long-closed room and the life-giving breeze of the street. "Shall I open the window?" asked she. "No, no," murmured Enrique. "I'm very weak. The cold would kill me."
The lighthouse rose red and gleaming from Cap'n David's garden spot; the bay, blue and rippling, spread in and out of its tiny sub-bays where the land stretched like five fingers of a hand, with the blue water in between. To the west lay the Hills in their "artistic desolation," and to the north of them The Bluff, with Mr. Devant's long-closed house gracing the summit.
Quick, witty, charming, full of light and ready talk, she received the experienced attack of the Honorable Patrick on the field of repartee and surprised, vanquished, delighted him. She unfolded her long-closed petals and around her the room became a garden. They tried to include "Big Jim" in the conversation, but he was without a vocabulary.
"Yes," interrupted Sara, looking up, "they will be at home inside of a fortnight, but she kindly says, "'Don't hurry to find rooms. I want to help you decide, and I shall be so glad to come home to a houseful of young people rather than to the usual gloom and stuffiness of long-closed rooms; besides, I have a proposition to make you." "What can it be?" cried Molly.
They were men wrapped up in their grim business; they liked well to open long-closed family vaults, blowing in the key and throwing wide the grating; and they carried in their minds a calendar of names and dates. It would be "in fifty-twa" that such a tomb was last opened for "Miss Jemimy." It was thus they spoke of their past patients -familiarly but not without respect, like old family servants.
Rather astonishingly, the air of the long-closed place was neither musty nor damp, when we stepped in. Instead, there was a faint, resinous odor, very pleasant and clean; perhaps from the cedar of which the woodwork largely consisted. The house was partially furnished. Not, of course, with much that I would care to retain, but a few good antiques stood out among their commonplace associates.
He had seen and heard in that room that which left him eager to live, to be free, to open a long-closed door hiding the mystery of years. The key, at last, had fallen almost within reach of his fingers, and he would never consent to be robbed of it by the wild rage of a mob. He grabbed the loaded revolver lying upon the floor, and swung Slavin's discarded belt across his shoulder.
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