He was not impressed. He was certainly laughing at the single knickerbocker of silk into which she had stuck a pot of late musk. “You’ve blocked the door of the china closet with that jar of feathers.” “The china closet! How delightful. It never occurred to me to ask what was beyond that door.” She tried the handle, then asked him for the key. “Gainah has it.” “I’ll get her to give it me.” She dashed out into the corridor and met the housekeeper midway. “I was coming to look for you,” she said, with her unfailing good temper and self-satisfaction. “I want your opinion on the drawing-room. There! Isn’t that pretty? Cousin Jethro doesn’t care a bit; but, then, men are no good at decoration. “And I want you to give me the key of the china closet,” she added. A queer flush stole over Gainah’s cheeks, and her distorted hand went involuntarily to her apron pocket, and her cold eyes sought Jethro’s beseechingly. Pamela had her palm outspread. “Yes, we’ll have a look in the closet,” Jethro said easily. “Don’t know when I went in last. There is a lot of stuff that was my mother’s and your aunt’s.” As he put in this touch, he glanced meaningly at Gainah, with the half-timid assertion of a big, kindly man who has been subjugated by a mean woman. He wanted her to remember, without troubling him to hurt her by putting it into words, that Pamela was one of the family, and had a close interest in the family crockery. “The closet is only opened once a year, when we clean in spring,” Gainah said grudgingly. “I don’t want strange fingers handling the china.” But she opened the door. Pamela, quite as a matter of course, took the key off the ring and slipped it into her own pocket. “It is a mistake to hide old china. The room won’t want locking again,” she said, gliding over the bare, dusty floor. “What a lovely collection! I wish I had known, then I need not have wasted money on Kaga. Anyone can buy that for so much three farthings--farthings play a most important part in modern decorations, Cousin Jethro.” She dimpled round at his puzzled face, and threw a conciliatory glance at Gainah, who had taken up a canary-colored jug with uneven black lettering straggling round its bulging middle. They were all three in the tiny room, lighted by one high window, across which the foamy white rose crept. “May I look?” Pamela took the canary jug. “‘Long may we leve. Happy may we be, Blest with content, And from misfortin’ free.’ “Most delightful sentiments, and equally delightful spelling,” she commented lightly, while Jethro watched her with a growing admiration, and the cold light slanted through the window on Gainah’s worn, malevolent face. “What blue bowls and dishes! What luster! I think they call that coppery stuff luster.” “My mother’s best tea set.” Jethro took up a tiny handleless cup with purplish-pink trails of flowers painted on it.