“I’ll be careful,” promised Polly.
“Did Carrie really have it in her desk?” asked Jess, round-eyed.
“She certainly did!” replied Margy, as they started to walk home. “I was almost sure she’d keep it there.”
“Say, what will she say when she can’t find it to-morrow morning?” said Artie. “And if she sees Polly wearing it, what will she think?”
“I don’t care what she thinks,” broke in Fred. “The point is, she can’t say anything. She won’t dare go around saying some one went through her desk, because she’d sound nice saying that some one took a Riddle Club pin she found on the stairs, wouldn’t she?”
“Perhaps she wasn’t sure it was my pin,” suggested Polly.
But the others laughed at this idea. The new pins Mr. Kirby had sent them were quite unlike any other pins in the town of River Bend and certainly Carrie knew them as well as the pins of her own Conundrum Club. Besides, wasn’t Polly’s name on the back?
“Let’s take our pins off before we begin to build the snowman,” said Polly, when they came in sight of their homes. “We might easily lose one in the snow.”
This was hailed as a wise precaution, and they ran in to put their individual pins in safe places.
Fred stopped short in surprise when he saw his room. The rug had been taken up, the bed was rolled in one corner, and his closet door was wide open. A row of his shoes stood on a newspaper spread on the window sill and in the center of his rocking chair sat the precious bank. A strange woman was down on her hands and knees, mopping the floor with hot water.