'When your mother died,' said the King--and he sighed, though it was twenty-one years to a day since he had lost his Queen-love--'I promised her to lock up her apartments, and only to give the keys of them to you when you should be twenty-one. And now you _are_, so here are the keys, my precious. You've always wanted to explore the rooms in the south wing. Well, now you can.' 'How lovely!' cried the Princess, jumping up; 'won't you come too, daddy?' 'I'd rather not, dear,' said the King, so sadly that Pandora at once said: 'Well, then, _I_ won't either. I'll stay with you.' But the King said 'No,' and she had better take a housemaid or two with brooms and dusters. 'The dust grows thick in twenty-one years,' said he. But the Princess didn't want any of the palace housemaids to help her to explore her mother's rooms. She went alone, holding up her cloth-of-silver train because of the dust. And the rooms that she unlocked with the six gold keys with pearls in their handles were very dusty indeed. The windows were yellow with dust, so the Princess threw them all open. And then, even through the dust, she could see how beautiful the rooms were--far more beautiful even than her own--and everyone had always said that hers were the most beautiful rooms in the seven kingdoms. She dusted the tops of a few of the tables and cabinets with her lace handkerchief, so that she could just see how everything was inlaid with ivory and jade and ebony and precious stones. Six of the keys--the pearly ones--opened six beautiful rooms, but the seventh had rubies in its handle, and it was a little, little key, not at all like a door-key; so Pandora looked about for a little keyhole that the key would fit, and at last she found a cabinet of ebony inlaid with gold and red tortoiseshell, and the little seventh key just fitted through the opening of the gold lock-plate and into the keyhole. Pandora turned the key and opened the cabinet. Inside the cabinet were seven little drawers with gold handles set with rubies, like the key. Pandora pulled the drawers out one after the other. She was alone, except for the house-fly, who had followed her and now sat on the top of the cabinet door, watching her with all his hundreds of eyes. But no one notices a fly. Five of the drawers contained jewels. The first was full of necklaces, the second held rings and brooches, the third had tiaras and chaplets, the fourth girdles, and the fifth bracelets, and they were all of the most beautiful jewels in the world--rubies, sapphires, emeralds, pearls and diamonds, and opals, and many other stones that the Princess did not even know the names of. In the sixth drawer was a dry brown wreath that fell to pieces as Pandora lifted it. It had been jasmine once, and the Queen had worn it at her wedding. [Illustration: 'In the drawer was just one jewelled ring. It lay on a written page.'--Page 347.] And in the seventh drawer was just one jewelled ring. It lay on a written page.