She looked all over the table and under it, behind every chair and in every corner, but she did not find it. “I wonder where it can be? Perhaps I took it to the sitting-room without thinking,” said Mrs. Martin to herself.
She went back to the sitting-room and looked everywhere, but found no Keepsake. Then she sat down in her rocking-chair and tried to think about something else, but could only say to herself: “I wonder where it is!”
Jim came into the room with a new Sunday-school book, which he began to read. Mrs. Martin looked at him while he read, but for some reason she did not say anything to him about the Keepsake.
The next morning she put off her washing, and as soon as Jim had gone to school she began to search the whole house; but no Keepsake did she find.
“It can’t be, it can’t be,” she said with tears in her eyes; “but I must look in his room—perhaps he took it up to look at—he said it was so pretty.”
Mrs. Martin went up to Jim’s room, but found nothing there except his clothes, the apples, and a few little treasures such as boys have.
Then she fell on her knees by Jim’s bed, and cried with all her heart. “No, I won’t believe it till I have to,” she said at last. “Poor boy; it’s hard on him and he has been so good, too! But I must speak to him about it, and if he has done wrong I must try to be patient with him.”
When Jim came home from school in the afternoon, Mrs. Martin called him into the sitting-room. “Come here, Jim,” she said; “I want to speak to you.”
She had said it very kindly, but there was something in her voice that made Jim feel a little queer.
He came in and stood before her, and she said to him: “Jim do you know what has become of that pretty Keepsake I showed you the other day? I can’t find it anywhere, and I have looked and looked.”