Mat carefully searched in the grass, and round the roots of the big tree, whose branches brushed against the very window-sill, and which knew the answer to the puzzle if only they could tell. He swung his lantern over the piazza roof and window-ledges, too, but in vain. The bronze slipper was not to be found, and Lydia and Mary Ellen went to bed side by side without even saying good-night.
Miss Martin hesitated whether to try to reconcile the little girls, but Lydia still believed Mary Ellen responsible for her loss, and Mary Ellen was hurt and angry at the undeserved suspicion.
“If I talk to them, no doubt they will say they are sorry, and that they forgive one another,” Miss Martin reflected wisely, “but they will say it really to please me. They won’t feel any different in their hearts. I will wait and see whether the mystery won’t clear itself up to-morrow.”
So, trusting in the morrow, Miss Martin put the thought out of her mind for the time being, since no one but Lydia now believed Mary Ellen had anything to do with the disappearance of the “brown betty,” and Lydia was forbidden to repeat her unwarranted accusation.
“Good news for you, Lydia,” was Miss Martin’s morning greeting. “Your mother is better, and you are to go home this afternoon.”
“Oh, goody!” said Lydia, smiling broadly as she sat up in bed. But the next instant the smile was gone and a cloud had come in its place.
“Did you find my slipper?” she asked eagerly.
“We haven’t looked for it again,” answered Miss Martin cheerfully. “After breakfast every one will turn to and hunt, and I feel sure we shall find it. We will do our best, anyway, won’t we, Mary Ellen?” And Miss Martin smiled into the downcast face.
“Yes, Miss Martin,” returned Mary Ellen politely, but she continued to lace her boots without a glance in Lydia’s direction. Plainly Mary Ellen still felt herself to be an injured person. There was even an idea in shrewd Miss Martin’s mind that Mary Ellen found not a little enjoyment in her martyrdom.
After breakfast every one started in a different direction, but search and hunt as children, maids, and men did in every conceivable nook and corner, there was no trace of the missing slipper, and at last they were forced to give up the search, and admit that apparently it had simply vanished from the face of the earth.