“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, he says it may be tried.  Lydia says try it, of course; and if no other key unlocks it she will pick the lock with a hairpin.  Oswald is again bruised by this suggestion; but he bears up like a man.  And so we dig up all the trunk keys and other small keys we can find and try to fool that trunk.  And nothing doing!

“I was confident of it,” says Oswald; he’s really disappointed, yet proud as Punch because his trunk refuses coldly to recognize these strange keys.

Then Lydia brings a bunch of hairpins and starts to be a burglar.  She says in clear tones that it is perfectly simple; and she keeps on saying exactly this after she’s bent the whole pack out of shape and not won a trick.  Yet she cheered Oswald a lot, in spite of her failures.  She never for one instant give in that it wasn’t simple to open a trunk without the key.

But it was getting pretty late for one night, so Oswald and Lydia knocked off and set out on the porch a while.  Oswald seemed to be awakening to her true woman’s character, which comes out clad in glory at times when things happen.  She told him she would sure have that trunk opened to-morrow with some more hairpins—­or something.

But in the morning she rushed to Oswald and said they would have the blacksmith up to open it.  He would be sure to open it in one minute with a few tools; and how stupid of her not to of thought of it before!  I liked that way she left Oswald out of any brain work that had to be done.  So they sent out to Abner to do the job, telling him what was wanted.