“Say, she’s insulting us!  Thinks we’re thugs,” murmured Ferd, as he, with the other boys, got down on the floor and began to examine the trunk eagerly.

“Yes, where do you suppose we got our experience in picking locks?” added Chet, looking aggrieved.

“Goodness, I don’t care whether you pick the lock or what you do as long as you get it open,” cried Billie, half wild with impatience now that the fateful moment had arrived.  “You can use dynamite for all I care.”

“Maybe that’s what’s in it,” suggested Teddy, and the girls screamed.

“Teddy!  Of all the wet blankets!”

“Well, you never can tell,” said Teddy, adding wickedly, as Ferd started to set the trunk on end:  “Be careful there, Ferd; she may explode, as the aeroplane did.”

“Somebody give me something to throw at him,” cried Laura indignantly.  “Anyway,” she added triumphantly, “we know there isn’t dynamite in it or we’d have been blown to bits long ago.  We dragged it down stairs.”

“Yes, and we didn’t do it very gently either,” added Violet.

“It has a pretty strong lock,” said Chet, getting to his feet and rumpling up his hair thoughtfully.  “I’ll have to get a hammer and a wedge of some sort.”

“Oh, there are all sorts of tools down in the tool-house,” Billie cried eagerly, and Chet looked at her as though she had said she had discovered a gold mine in the back yard.

“Tools!” he repeated, his eyes shining.  “Are they good ones?”

“I don’t know anything about tools,” said Billie.  “But it looked as if there were hundreds of them—­”

Chet waited to hear no more.  Like a streak of lightning he was out of the room and racing down the stairs.

“Tools!” he was saying gloatingly to himself, “hundreds of them!”

Upstairs Billie turned and looked at Teddy in dismay.

“Now what have I done?” she cried.  “If he once gets among those tools we won’t see him for hours.  Teddy,” and she looked appealing enough even to melt Teddy’s hard heart, “won’t you go after him?  You will have to just tear him away—­”

However, the two boys were back sooner than the girls expected, for they were very curious about the contents of the small shabby trunk, which had so evidently been hidden away in the darkest corner of a dark closet in the attic.

“Say, those are some tools, Billie,” said Chet jubilantly, as he pried away at the lock.  “You could do just about anything with them—­anything from making a house, to breaking into one.  I say,” he added, stopping work to look at her entreatingly, “don’t you remember mother saying that Aunt Beatrice left you the house and me—­the tools?”

The girls and boys laughed, and Billie patted his shoulder fondly.

“No, I don’t remember anything of the sort,” she said, imitating his tone to perfection.  “But if you’re a good boy and open the trunk in a hurry, I’ll deed them to you, Chet—­every last tool in the tool-house.”