“Oh, I forgot! I’ll run get you one immediately. I’m so sorry, Mother.”
Josie smiled. Mary always forgot the paper on Saturday afternoon and Mrs. Leslie never forgot to ask her about it.
“I have the early edition,” Josie called from her room. “Don’t go out again, Mary. It’s rather rumpled but I guess I can smooth it out.”
Josie reached for the afternoon paper and began straightening it out just as Mrs. Leslie appeared at the half opened door of the bed room. The girl was astonished to find that there was a parcel of some sort wrapped within the folds of the paper. It dropped out on the bed and then slipped to the floor. Mrs. Leslie stepped forward and stooped to pick it up but Josie, ever quick and agile, was before her. The tissue paper package tore and disclosed a crumpled mass of filmy lace and, gleaming through its folds, a golden mesh purse.
“What is that?” demanded Mrs. Leslie sharply.
“I’m sure I don’t know. It seemed to be wrapped up in the afternoon paper which has been reposing in my pocket all afternoon,” said Josie, coolly. “How it got there I’ll leave you to find out. I must hurry out again as I find I have an important matter to attend to.”
Josie’s quick eye had recognized a Burnett & Burnett tag on the purse and her quicker mind had traveled like lightning back to the time Miss Fauntleroy had angrily twisted the paper and cast it in the old beggar’s basket. Then she remembered how loath the old woman had been to let her buy that particular paper.
She stuffed the parcel of lace in her pocket, placed the delicately wrought mesh bag in her own purse, and without waiting to hear what Mrs. Leslie had to say she hurried into the street and hailed a passing taxi.