As long as she could remember she had been permitted to play with the
contents of the late Herr Conrad Wilner's wonder-box. The programme on
such occasions varied little; the child was permitted to rummage among
the treasures in the box until she had satisfied her perennial
curiosity; conversation with her absent-minded father ensued, which
ultimately included a personal narrative, dragged out piecemeal from
the reticent, dreamy invalid. Then always a few pages of the diary
kept by the late Herr Wilner were read as a bedtime story. And bath
and bed and dreamland followed. That was the invariable routine, now
once more in full swing.
Her father lay on his invalid's chair, reading; his rubber-shod
crutches rested against the wall, within easy reach. By him, beside
the kerosene lamp, her mother sat, mending her child's stockings and
underwear.
Outside the circle of lamplight the incandescent eyes of the stove
glowed steadily through the semi-dusk; and the child, always
fascinated by anything that aroused her imagination, lifted her gaze
furtively from time to time to convince herself that it really was the
big, familiar stove which glared redly back at her, and not a dragon
into which her creative fancy had so often transformed it.
Reassured, she continued to explore the contents of the wonder-box--a
toy she preferred to her doll, but not to her beloved set of
water-colours and crayon pencils.
Some centuries ago Pandora's box let loose a world of troubles; Herr
Wilner's box apparently contained only pleasure for a little child
whose pleasures were mostly of her own invention.
It was a curious old box, made of olive wood and bound with bands of
some lacquered silvery metal to make it strong--rupee silver,eg
perhaps--strangely wrought with Arabic characters engraved and in
shallow relief. It had handles on either side, like a sea-chest; a
silver-lacquered lock and hasp which retained traces of violent usage;
and six heavy strap hinges of the same lacquered metal.
Within it the little child knew that a most fascinating collection of
articles was to be discovered, taken out one by one with greatest
care, played with discreetly, and, at her mother's command, returned
to their several places in Herr Wilner's box.
There were, in this box, two rather murderous-looking Kurdish daggers
in sheaths of fretted silver--never to be unsheathed, it was solemnly
understood, except by the child's father.
There was a pair of German army revolvers of the pattern of 1900, the
unexploded cartridges of which had long since been extracted and
cautiously thrown into the mill pond by the child's mother, much to
the surprise, no doubt, of the pickerel and sunfish.