“If I were you I wouldn’t say anything about remembering, now or for some time to come,” snapped her brother.
“Friends,” Grandmother Sweet’s voice was serenely calm, “if thee will refrain from thy bickering and explain what thee means, it will be clear to our minds what doubtless thee wishes us to know.”
While Rose, unable longer to restrain her impatience, exclaimed, “Oh, tell us, have you found who stole the money?”
“That is just what I want to do if I can have a chance,” and Mr. Fifield glared at Jane and Eudora. Then to Rose, “No, we haven’t found who stole the money,” and as her face paled he hastened to add, “because, in fact, the money was not stolen at all.”
“Where—what—” cried his eager listeners, while Rose drew a long breath of infinite relief and sank back in her chair trembling, almost faint with the joyful relaxation after the long strain of anxiety.
“Jane,” Mr. Nathan continued, rubbing his head till every hair stood up, “simply saw fit to remove the money from the place where she knew I was in the habit of keeping it, without even letting me know what she had done.”
“You see,” explained Miss Fifield, feeling herself placed on the defensive and determined to maintain it boldly, “I had just read of a man who kept his money in a stove, and one day some one built a fire and burned it all up, so I felt a stove was not a very safe hiding-place.”
“Well,” snorted Mr. Nathan, “as there hasn’t to my certain knowledge been a fire in that parlor stove for the last four years, I don’t think there was much danger, to say nothing of the fact that gold will not burn.”
“But it will melt,” triumphantly. “Besides, I have been told that when burglars go into a house under carpets and in stoves are among the first places they look. For these reasons I changed it to a trunk under a pile of papers in the store-room. I intended to have told Nathan what I had done, but in the hurry of getting away I did forget. But I should have thought that before accusing any one they would have waited to see what I knew about the matter.”
“You say so much about my being forgetful that I didn’t suppose you ever did such a thing as to forget,” growled Mr. Nathan. And Eudora added, “And her mind’s always on what she is doing. She has so little patience with mistakes I never thought of her being the one to blame.”