“You show us,” Arden urged.
Melissa entered the solitary house, the door of which swung loosely on its hinges. The front room, furnished with an unpainted wooden table and three rickety chairs, was dreary and uninviting. The girl, clumping along in the boots which were much too large for her, entered a small room to one side. It was little bigger than a large closet with a white-painted bed and an old bureau topped by a cracked looking glass.
After much shaking and pulling, Melissa succeeded in opening the top drawer. She rummaged under some old clothes and thrust her hands far back in the bureau.
Suddenly, with an unbelieving look on her face, she turned to the little group crowded in the narrow doorway.
“It’s gone!” she exclaimed. “The box, the pretty yellow one that I put there myself, is gone!”
Was it a trick that Melissa had played on them? Or had Terry argued so successfully that the girl had actually come to believe she really did possess the box?
“Are you sure you had it?” Arden asked gently. “When did you see it last?”
“This morning I took it out to look at it,” Melissa replied slowly.
“What did it look like?” Terry asked, not quite believing that Melissa ever had it now.
“It had a little bird on and the prettiest shiny stones all around the edge,” Melissa answered woefully. “Oh, I did like it so much! It was so pretty!”