“Oh, it’s all right, I dare say,” said the clerk carelessly; “you run along and get a note from somebody, and that will do.”
The children walked out of the store in a state divided between indignation and bewilderment.
“I said I found it,” repeated Cricket. “I don’t see what he wants a note for.”
“Let’s go somewhere else and sell it, and then they’ll be sorry,” said Hilda, tossing her head.
“Yes, we’ll go somewhere else, but first we had better go home and get a note from papa. Somebody else might ask for one,” returned Cricket, learning wisdom by experience. “You see, papa said we could have it if it wasn’t a real diamond, and it isn’t.”
They rushed up to the library and to the office, but papa was still out, and would not be back until dinner-time, the waitress told them. Then they went for mamma, but she had not returned either.
“Let’s write a note ourselves,” said Hilda. “Any kind of a note will do, I suppose. You see, it’s really ours. Your father said so.”
“Yes, I suppose it is. What shall we say? Let’s make up something.”
“All right! You take the ring,—now give it to me, and I’ll put in the note that a friend gave it to me, and I don’t like it, or something, and that we want to sell it. That will be regularly story-booky.”
After much writing and giggling and rewriting, the following note was concocted: