?

"Why, it's perfectly simple! You open it some other way," says Lydia.

"Ah, but how?" says Oswald. "Those trunks are superbly built. How can
one?"

"Oh, it must be easy," says Lydia, still clinging to her candy sour.
"I'll open it for you to-morrow if you will remind me."

"Remind you?" says Oswald in low, tragic tones. You could see he was
never going to think of anything else the rest of his life.

By this time the Prof and I had controlled our heartless merriment; so we
all traipsed in to the scene of this here calamity and looked at the shut
trunk. It was shut good; no doubt about that. There was also no doubt
about the keys being inside.

"You can hear them rattle!" says the awed Oswald, teetering the trunk on
one corner. So each one of us took a turn and teetered the trunk back and
forth and heard the imprisoned keys jingle against the side where they
was hung.

"But what's to be done?" says Oswald. "Of course something must be done."
That seemed to be about where Oswald got off.

"Why, simply open it some other way," says Lydia, which seemed to be
about where she got off, too.

"But how?" moans the despairing man. And she again says:

"Oh, it must be too simple!"

At that she was sounding the only note of hope Oswald could hear; and
right then I believe he looked at her fair and square for the first time
in his life. He was finding a woman his only comforter in his darkest
hour.

The Prof took it lightly indeed. He teetered the trunk jauntily and says:

"Your device was admirable; you will always know where those keys are."
Then he teetered it again and says, like he was lecturing on a platform:
"This is an ideal problem for the metaphysical mind. Here, veritably,
is life itself. We pick it up, we shake it, and we hear the tantalizing
key to existence rattle plainly just inside. We know the key to be there;
we hear it in every manifestation of life. Our problem is to think it
out. It is simple, as my child has again and again pointed out. Sit there
before your trunk and think effectively, with precision. You will then
think the key out. I would take it in hand myself, but I have had a hard
day."

Then Lydia releases her candy long enough to say how about finding
some other trunk keys that will unlock it. Oswald is both hurt and made
hopeful by this. He don't like to think his beautiful trunk could respond
to any but its rightful key; it would seem kind of a slur against its
integrity. Still,