“Let’s look, then.”
Two heads bent over the sheet spread out on Richard’s knee. They read slowly in unison, “Dear friend,” then turned over the paper and sought the last line. “Your grateful friend Dave.”
“We don’t know any more now than we did before,” said Georgina, virtuously folding up the letter and slipping it back into the envelope.
“Let’s take it to Uncle Darcy. Then he’ll let us go along and ring the bell when he calls, ‘Found.’”
Richard had two objections to this. “Who’d pay him for doing it? Besides, it’s gold money, and anybody who loses that much would advertise for it in the papers. Let’s keep it till this week’s papers come out, and then we’ll have the fun of taking it to the person who lost it.”
“It wouldn’t be safe for us to keep it,” was Georgina’s next objection. “It’s gold money and burglars might find out we had it.”
“Then I’ll tell you”--Richard’s face shone as he made the suggestion-- “Let’s _bury_ it. That will keep it safe till we can find the owner, and when we dig it up we can play it’s pirate gold and it’ll be like finding real treasure.”
“Lets!” agreed Georgina. “We can keep out something, a nickel or a dime, and when we go to dig up the pouch we can throw it over toward the place where we buried the bag and say, ‘Brother, go find your brother,’ the way Tom Sawyer did. Then we’ll be certain to hit the spot.”
Richard picked up the compass, and rubbed the polished sides of the nut in which it was set.
“I’ll keep this out instead of a nickel. I wonder what the fellow’s name was that this D. D. stands for?”