"It's all my fault!" cried Linda, contritely. "My silly, foolish, childishness, for wanting to show off!"
Nobody of course had any idea what she was talking about—nobody except Ralph.
"No! No! It was mine!" he protested. "My carelessness!"
"Then you both knew!" exclaimed Kitty, raising her head, which she had buried on Linda's shoulder while she sobbed. "Oh, how cruel, not to prepare me!"
"On my honor, we didn't!" averred Ralph, and from the look on his face, his sister knew that he was telling the truth.
"Explain what you meant, then," she commanded.
"Let me tell you," put in Linda. "But sit down, Kit dear. You're liable to faint.... You see, we were robbed, and too foolish to suspect it. We even paid the robber twenty dollars for doing the job."
"So you said," Kitty remarked, impatiently. "Do you mean that you saw somebody take it—right under your eyes?" She had dropped down on the couch, and her pale little face was pitiful to see. The tears still ran down her cheeks, washing tiny rivers through the powder. Luckily she was not a girl who used rouge, or she would have looked ridiculous. As it was, she gave the appearance of a very unhappy child.
"Exactly!" explained Linda. "Or rather, we might have, if we had had sense enough to realize it. I wanted to try a couple of loops, and we started quite high, but by the time we had finished, we were over an open field. It was then that Ralph suddenly realized that the box had dropped out of his pocket when the plane was on its side. So we decided to land, and search the field."
"And somebody had already picked it up?" demanded Dot, excitedly.