“But it must be somewhere,” Miss Martin repeated. “It didn’t walk away by itself. I won’t give up.”
By dinner-time the fruitless search was over, and in the afternoon the children scattered to their play, Polly and Tom escorting Lydia and Roger in a tour of the vegetable garden, hoping thus to raise the drooping spirits of their visitors.
Miss Martin missed Mary Ellen, and going in search of her, found her in her bedroom, leaning on the window-sill from which the bronze slipper had taken its mysterious flight.
The little girl had nursed her sense of injury all day, and now had stolen away from the other children to spend a lonely afternoon. She was deep in thought, but not so absorbed that she did not hear Miss Martin enter the room, although she continued to gaze out of the window.
“I guess if I died, Lydia would feel badly,” she was thinking. “I would be dressed all in white, with my hair in long curls, and I would hold one white rose in my hand. They would all come and look at me, and oh, how they would all cry! I guess Lydia would cry hardest of all. Perhaps, though, they wouldn’t even let her in, she’s been so mean to me.” And a tear was all ready to roll down Mary Ellen’s cheek, when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“What do you see, sister Anne?” asked Miss Martin, gayly. “Are there any birds’ nests in the tree?” She apparently did not notice the abused look Mary Ellen turned upon her as she sat down in the window beside the child.
“No, but there are two squirrels in the tree, big fellows. Here they come.” And Mary Ellen pointed to the two gray squirrels climbing in swift darts higher and higher up the old trunk. “Aren’t they cute?” she whispered, neglecting her own grievance for interest in the squirrels. “Their hole is by that big branch. There goes one in now.”
Mary Ellen and Miss Martin held their breath as the remaining squirrel pursued his way up the tree. When he reached the branch opposite their window, to their delight he turned and crept toward them. Motionless, they watched him leap from the tip of the swaying bough to the broad window-sill, where he sat upright, peering sharply about with his bright little eyes.
And then in a flurry, with every appearance of haste, Mr. Squirrel departed, for Mary Ellen had abruptly broken the spell. She had waved her arms wildly, and had called out in a loud voice:
“Miss Martin, I believe they took Lydia’s slipper.”