“Aren’t they nice?” asked Lydia, following Roger’s gaze. “I knew you would like the boys. They won’t hurt you. And the girls are fun, too.” And Lydia beamed proudly round at her friends, old and new.
“I’ll take you out to see my rabbits after supper, if you like,” offered Sammy, extra polite because of his recent behavior.
“And I’ll give you a swing,” volunteered Tom bashfully.
The boys were nice, Roger thought, and when, after supper, Lydia whispered hastily, “You go with the boys now, Roger, and I’ll come in a minute; I only want to show something to Polly,” he trotted off contentedly, and was soon engrossed in the bunnies, who obligingly devoured cabbage leaves, with seemingly no limit to their appetite.
Lydia and Polly hastened upstairs and into the room where Lydia was to sleep that night with two other little girls. Her bag had been unpacked, and her clothes neatly disposed in one of the small cupboards that lined the wall. On the window-sill lay Lucy Locket, and beside her only one of the bronze slippers.
“Why, I don’t see it anywhere, Polly,” said Lydia, after a third search of the cupboard for the missing shoe. “You help me look.”
The girls made a careful search, but no bronze slipper was to be found.
“I know I brought them both,” said Lydia at last, her face puckering. “Father said so, and I looked in the bag myself.”
“Perhaps some one has taken it,” was all Polly, her eyes big and round, could suggest.
“I know who did it!” exclaimed Lydia, her head in a whirl at her loss. “It’s that Mary Ellen. She took my slipper because she didn’t like them, and I’m going to tell Miss Martin.”