Since her mother's death, since the moment when the three young girls
had bent over the coffin and strewed flowers over the form they loved,
the sisters had not gone near this room.

Hannah had dusted it and kept it tidy, but the blinds had been drawn
down and the sun excluded. The girls had shrunk from entering this
chamber; it seemed to them like a grave. They passed it with reverent
steps, and spoke in whispers as they stole on tiptoe by the closed
door.

It occurred, however, to Primrose that now was an opportunity when she
might come into the room and put some of her mother's treasures
straight. She unlocked the door and entered; a chill, cold feeling
struck on her. Had she been Jasmine she would have turned and fled,
but being Primrose, she instantly did what her clear common sense told
her was the sensible course.

"We have made up our minds to go on as usual," she said to herself;
"and letting in the sunlight and the daylight is not forgetting our
dear mother."

Then she pulled up the blinds, and threw the window-sashes wide open.

A breath of soft warm air from the garden instantly filled the dreary
chamber, and Primrose, sitting down by an old-fashioned little
cabinet, slipped a key into the lock of the centre drawer, and opened
it.

Mrs. Mainwaring had been by no means a tidy or careful person--she
hated locks, and seemed to have a regular aversion to neatly-kept