Only a few days after that, Sabrina climbed the upper stairs surreptitiously, to try the key of her own room door in the lock. As she had expected, it refused to turn. And there were books in there that she felt sure she wanted to read. Thoughtfully she returned to her room, and her eyes were caught by a button-hook on the dressing-table, and a small pair of curved scissors. People even picked locks with hairpins.... She hadn’t any hairpins. But Aunt Effie had.

* * * * * * * *

AND NOW AT LAST SHE stood inside the closed door, full of a pleasant wickedness, and looked about her.

It was a livable, used-looking, comfortable, self-contained room of majestic proportions, with nothing of the garret about it. It was essentially a private room, for he was a man who kept himself to himself. It looked to her eager eyes as though it expected him to walk back into it at any minute.

But Sabrina, who was shy of strangers, was not at all disturbed by the off-chance of being caught by him in the very act of trespassing. She was so sure, as soon as she saw the room, that it was expecting her too.

It was L-shaped, for a wall had been knocked out between two smaller rooms. From the door you faced the large carved oak mantelpiece, with a modern chintz-covered chesterfield at right angles to it, and a smoking-table with a lamp and ashtray at its right hand. The wall on your left and the space either side of the mantelpiece was filled with open bookshelves. Opposite the chesterfield the wall, which ran the length of both rooms, had two casement windows opening above the garden to the south, with a cushioned window seat beneath each of them, and the ceiling, though high, revealed the slope of two gables. The big, practical knee-hole desk stood at an angle to the near window. This, with a couple of chintz armchairs and the low fireside hassock, made the living room end.

In the L to your right was the other window, with a tall chest of drawers beyond. The bed, an enormous square without a footboard, covered with wine-colored velour and heaped with dark silk cushions, stood with its head against the middle of the end wall, on one side of it a table with a reading-lamp and some books, on the other a door. Against the right-hand wall was a splendid mahogany wardrobe. There was a low chair under the casement window, and an old chest at the end of the bed. The rugs were soft, faded Persians.

Sabrina was irresistibly drawn to the nearest bookcase...

The fading of the short spring day, when the page gradually got too dim to be read without a light, reminded her that she would be missed from downstairs as tea time came on. She unfolded herself from the chesterfield, replaced the book on the shelf, and started hastily downstairs.