that the little
green door was on the inside of the house only, and not on the
outside. When Letitia went out in the field behind the house, there
was nothing but the blank wall to be seen. There was no sign of a
door in it. But the cheese-room was certainly the last room in the
house, and the little green door was in the rear wall. When Letitia
asked her Great-aunt Peggy to explain that, she only got the same
answer:

"It is not best for you to know, my dear."

Letitia studied the little green door more than she studied her
lesson-books, but she never got any nearer the solution of the
mystery, until one Sunday morning in January. It was a very cold day,
and she had begged hard to stay home from church. Her Aunt Peggy and
the maid-servant, old as they were, were going, but Letitia shivered
and coughed a little and pleaded, and finally had her own way.

"But you must sit down quietly," charged Aunt Peggy, "and you must
learn your texts, to repeat to me when I get home."

After Aunt Peggy and the old servant, in their great cloaks and
bonnets and fur tippets, had gone out of the yard and down the road,
Letitia sat quiet for fifteen minutes or so, hunting in the Bible for
easy texts; then suddenly she thought of the little green door, and
wondered, as she had done so many times before, if it could possibly
be opened. 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.

Suddenly she thought of a little satin-wood box with a picture on the
lid which Aunt Peggy kept in her top bureau-drawer. Letitia had often
seen this box, but had never been allowed to open it.

"I wonder if the key can be in that box," said she.

She did not wait a minute. She was so naughty that she dared not wait
for fear she should remember that she ought to be good. 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