“That’s different. Lots of people might take a pin, and they wouldn’t take money. Besides, how do we know Carrie didn’t intend to give the pin back to Polly? Margy didn’t give her a chance to return it.”
“Jess! Jessie! Come in right away!” called Mrs. Larue.
Jess had to go in to supper without her glove, and Artie went home, too. Fred looked around in the snow for a few minutes longer, but the storm was increasing and he finally gave up. He could hardly touch his supper, and afterward he told his father what had happened.
“I’m sorry I didn’t put the money in the bank, as you said,” poor Fred concluded his story. “But I never thought I could lose a thing like a bank.”
“Well, Fred, it seems as though it must turn up,” Mr. Williamson said, trying to speak cheerfully. “I don’t see, myself, how a bank and its money contents could disappear, unless some one has stolen it. And we won’t think that.”
“Try to remember where you had it last, Fred,” his mother suggested.
“Why, I thought I took it over to the Marleys’ to leave in the clubroom,” said Fred. “I can’t remember letting it out of my hand. But the room was locked and Ward hadn’t been near it.”
“Perhaps you left it somewhere else in the Marleys’,” said Mrs. Williamson, “and you were in such a hurry to get out and build the snowman, you did not notice. If Artie or Polly find it, they’ll be over to tell you.”
But neither Polly nor Artie found the bank. Fred went over there before going to bed—and had to plough through several inches of fresh snow—but none of the Marley family had seen the bank.
In the morning the window sills were banked high with snow and there were no foot prints around the snowman, who stood tall and strong, a handsome guard for the street.