“Maybe you left it in your own room,” said Artie, comfortably.
“I’m sure I didn’t,” Fred answered. “But it won’t hurt to go and look. I might have put it down again without thinking.”
“Lots of times I think I’ve done a thing and haven’t,” observed Artie, trotting beside Fred, as he went back to the Williamson house. “And sometimes I think I didn’t do a thing and it turns out that I did.”
But neither of these “thinks” proved of much help to Fred. The bank was not in his room, now in perfect, shining order with his things in their accustomed places. It was not on the hall table where he had once left it. In fact, the sad fact dawned on Fred, slowly and unhappily, that he had lost the bank and its precious contents.
CHAPTER XVII
LOST TREASURES
“Let’s go out and look in the snow,” suggested Artie. “You must have dropped it between your house and ours.”
As the two boys opened the front door a whirl of snow flew in their faces. In the brief time they had been within doors a new snowstorm had gained headway.
“Who’s that?” called Fred, suddenly.
“Who’s that yourself?” Carrie Pepper’s voice retorted. “Your old snowman is enough to scare any one going by—they’ll think it is a giant.”
Carrie hurried across the street with the mail, and Fred tried not to think she might have been hunting around the snowman.