"I was pleased that you wrote me yourself. Be a good child. I hope to be better soon and to have you at home for your next vacation. So some of the girls have mothers and you want to know about yours? I will tell you all that I know when I feel stronger. The nurse is writing for me. I never saw your mother and the only letters I have had from her were destroyed by mistake. They were to stop on their way to New York the summer after you were born. Your father took all your mother's photographs with him and what became of them I do not know. He came East so suddenly, half delirious, saying that your mother had died.
"It was very fortunate that I found you both. I had moved, writing and telegraphing, but from what he said in his delirium he must have moved too. He was on his way to the old home, when providentially I took the same train from a business trip to a town near by. I took you both from the train and to a hospital in the nearest place, a hospital of which I happened to know. Both of you were ill for weeks and after it was all over and I could think of sending for any of your father's things, it was too late. No one seemed to know anything. He was young, just starting in business, and I was too worn out to care. They were, or had been living in a furnished apartment. Your father after I found him never had been himself, only to say, 'She is dead.'
"I wrote to your mother's people several times, but never received a reply. If they had so little interest, I was only too glad to have my boy's little girl to myself. 'Gramma' loves you dearly, and when I get well, we shall have some good times."
This letter was probably read to Jannet at the time, but she could scarcely recall it. Even there, her grandmother had not mentioned names, and Miss Hilliard said that the Eldon family Bible sent to Jannet had no record entered of her father's marriage.
The letters, with the pages of the diary between them, Jannet put back in their drawer and laid this letter, with the scrap from the book, with them. That scrap must refer to the loss of the pearls, yet why should her mother _write_ to her uncle about it? It was puzzling.
Now to find that "most secret drawer." Jannet had all sorts of fancies about how to find secret drawers. There was one worn spot, with a narrow piece of yielding wood, in a groove by a little ridge of the mahogany. Jannet rubbed the worn place, thinking of Aladdin's lamp, but nothing happened. Then she noticed a tiny glint of brass by the ridge and pressed it with the point of her knife. There! a drawer, sticking a little, began to move out. Jannet inserted her fingers and pulled gently, afraid of breaking the delicate wood. "Oh, how beautiful!" she exclaimed as the drawer came out to its full length. There, upon the soft purple velvet of its case, coiled a shining rope of pearls!