The Blunderbuss wet her lips nervously. “I—I wanted to ask you about something, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll see you some other time. You’ll want to talk to Miss Wales now.”
She had almost reached the door, when, to Eleanor’s further astonishment, Betty darted after her and caught her by the sleeve. “Miss Harrison,” she said, while the Blunderbuss stared at her angrily, “I’m in no hurry at all. I can wait as well as not, or if you want to see Eleanor alone I will go out. But I think that you owe it to Eleanor and to yourself too to say why you are here.”
The Blunderbuss looked defiantly from Betty’s determined face to Eleanor’s puzzled one. “I didn’t know it was Miss Watson’s room until you came in and asked for her,” she vouchsafed at last.
“You didn’t know it was her room?” repeated Betty coldly. “Why didn’t you tell me that long ago? Whose room did you think you were in?”
“I thought—I didn’t know whose it was.”
“Then,” said Betty deliberately, “if you admit that you were in here without knowing who occupied the room you must excuse me if I ask you whether or not you were looking through Eleanor’s bureau drawers just before I came in.”
There was a strained silence.
“You can have all the things back,” said the Blunderbuss at last, as coolly as if she were speaking of returning a borrowed umbrella; and out of the pockets of the child’s apron which she still wore she pulled a gold chain and a bracelet and held them out to Eleanor. “I don’t want them,” she said when neither of the others spoke. “I don’t know why I took them. It just came over me that while all the others were out there playing it would be a good chance for me to go and look at their pretty things.”
“And to steal the ones you liked best,” added Betty scornfully.
The Blunderbuss gave her a vaguely troubled look. “I didn’t think of it that way. Anyway it’s all right now. Haven’t I given them right back?”