UNCLE DICK MUST BE TOLD
The two girls did not tell Bob Henderson all that had happened in the
little shop when they first came out. They were in too much haste to get
to the other places where it might be possible that Betty had dropped her
locket. Of all things, they did not suspect that Mrs. Staples knew the
first thing about it.
But they did tell the boy that Ida Bellethorne had gone away.
"Where's she gone?" asked the inquisitive Bob. "Couldn't be that she found
the locket and ran off with it?"
"Why, you're almost horrid!" declared Betty, aggrieved. "You don't know
what a nice girl Ida is."
"Humph!" (Could he have caught that expression from waiting outside Mrs.
Staples' shop?) "Humph! I don't believe you know how nice she is, or
otherwise. You never saw her but once."
"But she's seen the horse," giggled Bobby.
"What horse?" demanded Bob.
"Mr. Lewis Bolter's black mare, Ida Bellethorne."
"Oh!"
"And, oh, Bob!" cried Betty, "there's another Ida Bellethorne, and this
Ida has gone away to see her. She's her aunt."
"Who's her aunt?" grumbled Bob, who was having some difficulty just then
in driving the car and so could not give his full attention to the matter
the girls were chattering about.
"Why, see!" cried Betty, rummaging in her bag. "Here's the piece of
newspaper with the society item, or whatever it is, in it that made Ida go
away so suddenly this morning. It's about her aunt, the great concert
singer. Ida's gone to meet her where that says," and she put the piece of
paper into Bob's hand.
"All right," he said. "Here's Markham and Boggs' place. You said you were
in this store yesterday, Betty."
"So I was. Come on, Bobby," cried the other girl, hopping out of the car.
"I suppose we shall have to go to the manager or the superintendent or
somebody. Dear me! if we don't find my locket I don't know what I shall
do."
When Betty and Bobby came out of the store, much disappointed, they found
Bob grinning--as Bobby declared--"like a Cheshire cat."
"But never mind the cat," continued Bobby. "What is the matter with that
boy? For boys will laugh at the most serious things. And this is serious,
my poor, dear Betty."
"Indeed it is," agreed her friend, and so they crossed the walk to the
grinning Bob Henderson who had the scrap of newspaper Betty had given him
in his hand.
"Say," he drawled, "who did you say this aunt of Ida Bellethorne is?"
"Mrs. Staples says she is a concert singer--a prima donna," replied Betty.
"She's a prima donna all right," chuckled Bob. "Where now? Oh! To Stone's
shoe shop? Well, what do you know about this notice in the paper?" and his
smile grew broader.
"What do you mean, Bob?" demanded Betty, rather vexed. "You can read the
paragraph yourself. 'The great Ida Bellethorne'. That means she is a great
singer of course."
"Yes, I see," replied Bob, giving some attention to the steering of the
car. "But there is one thing about you girls--you never read the sporting
page of the newspaper."
"What is that?" gasped Bobby Littell.
"This string of items you handed me is torn out of the sporting page. All
the paragraphs refer to racing matters. That particular one deals with Mr.
Bolter's black mare, Ida Bellethorne. Cliffdale is the place he was
shipping her to far her health."
"Never!" cried Bobby.
"Oh, Bob! Is that so?" gasped Betty.
Bob burst into open laughter. "That's a good one on you and on your
friend, Ida," he declared. "If she has gone to meet her aunt up in New
York State she'll meet a horse instead. How's that for a joke?"
Betty Gordon shook her head without smiling. "I don't see the joke at
all," she said. "Poor Ida! She will be sadly disappointed. And she has
lost her position here with Mrs. Staples. We could see that Mrs. Staples
was angry because she went away."
"Why," cried Bobby, likewise sympathetic, "I think it is horrid--actually
horrid! You needn't laugh, Bob Henderson."
"Shucks!" returned the boy. "I can't cry over it, can I? Of course it is
too bad the girl has made such a mistake. But our weeping won't help her."
"No," confessed Bobby, "I suppose that is so."
"And our weeping won't find my locket," sighed Betty. "Dear me! If I did
drop it in Stone's place I hope they have saved it for me."
But the locket was not to be found in that shop, either. Nor in the two
others which Betty Gordon had visited the previous day. This indeed was a
perfectly dreadful thing! The plainer it was that the locket could not be
found, the more repentent and distracted Betty became.
"I shall have to tell Uncle Dick--I shall have to," she wailed, when Bob
drove them away from the last place and all hope was gone glimmering. "Oh,
dear! It is dreadful."
"Don't take on so, Betty!" Bob begged gruffly, for he could not bear to
see the girl actually cry. "I'll tell him if you are afraid to."
"Don't you dare!" she flared out at him. "I'm not afraid. Only I dread it.
It was the nicest present he ever gave me and--and I loved it. But I did
not take proper care of it. I realize that now, when it is too late."
Bob remained serious of aspect after that. That his mind was engaged with
the problem of Betty's lost trinket was proved by what he said on the way
back to Fairfields:
"I suppose you spoke to all the clerks you traded with in those stores,
Betty?"
"Why, yes. All but Ida Bellethorne, Bob."
"And Mrs. Staples said she didn't know anything about Betty's locket,"
Bobby put in.
Of course, this was not so; but Bobby thought she was telling the exact
truth. The two girls really had not explained Betty's loss to Mrs. Staples
at all.
"The English girl going off so suddenly, and on such a wild-goose chase,
looks kind of fishy, you know," drawled Bob.
"She thinks she is chasing her aunt!" Bobby cried.
"Maybe."
"You don't even know her, Bob," declared Betty haughtily. "You can't judge
her character. I am sure she is honest."
"Well," grumbled Bob, "being sure everybody is honest isn't going to get
you that locket back, believe me!"
"That's horrid, too! Isn't it, Betty?" demanded Bobby.
"It's sort of, I guess," said Betty, much troubled, "But, oh, Bob! I don't
want to think that poor girl found my locket and ran away with it. No, I
don't want to believe that. And, anyway, it doesn't help me out a mite.
I've got to tell Uncle Dick before he notices that I don't display his
pretty present any more. Oh, dear!"
"It's a shame," groaned Bobby, holding her chum's hand tightly.
"Guess there are worse things than measles in this world," observed Bob,
as he stopped the small car under the _porte cochère_ at Fairfields.