John was disgusted when he came home from a meeting of the Big Four to find that he had missed this most exciting discovery; although, after all, when it came to the jewelry, John thought the result rather small. “My goodness, Mary!” he exclaimed, “I’ll bet there are lots more things hidden in that old library of yours. Don’t you go and do all the hunting when I’m not here.”
“I don’t,” said Mary. “I didn’t mean to hunt. I don’t ever mean to hunt. But if things come—all right.”
“I wish you’d let me have the fun of hunting in the library all I want, just once,” said John wistfully.
Mary hesitated. She did not want anybody to rummage among her books. But she hated to be “stingy,” and she felt as if she were really having more than her share of fun out of Aunt Nan’s legacy, in spite of John’s two thousand dollars. So she said generously, without letting John see how great an effort it was: “All right, Johnny. To-morrow is Saturday, and I’ll give you free leave to hunt all you want to in my library. I won’t even come to bother you.”
“Bully for you!” crowed John. “Finding’s having?”
But that was more than Mary bargained for.
“Oh, no, John!” she cried. “I don’t think Aunt Nan would like that. Do you?”
“Oh, bother! I suppose not,” grumbled John. “She was a queer one!”
The next Saturday morning John spent in hunting that library from floor to ceiling. Caliban, sitting on a corner of the mantelpiece, watched him gravely during the whole operation, but offered no suggestions. John poked behind the books, in every corner, under every rug. He even ripped open a bit of the cover on the old sofa. But nothing interesting could he find.
“I say, Caliban, can’t you help me?” he said once, to the watching cat.