Thieves? Housebreakers?
She neither dared to move nor cry out; but the five minutes she remained where she was seemed to her a lifetime. At the end of that space the echo of retreating footsteps was so plain that she rallied her courage and ran into Bonny’s room, crying: “Wake up! wake up! We’ve been robbed! Burglars— Oh!”
“Yes, dear, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again!” responded Beatrice, sleepily.
CHAPTER XVIII.
ROBERT’S OCCUPATION GONE.
IT was such an absurd answer that Isabelle laughed. In the laughter much of her fear, and all of her anger against her sister, vanished. With the quick rebound of her loving nature she clasped her arms about the neck of the sleepy Beatrice and kissed her heartily.
The disturbed secretary sat up and demanded: “What is the matter, eh? Oh, I remember. Well, I’m sorry, Belle. It was horrid of me, though I didn’t intend to do it. I’d make you some more custards if Mother would let me; but I suppose she would say we could not afford so much luxury twice in the same week.”
It does not matter what the elder girl replied. The reconciliation was complete, and once more two young hearts were beating high with aspirations after better things, although, it must be confessed, Bonny’s ideas were rather vaguely exalted, owing to her drowsiness; but Belle was keenly self-reproachful, and exclaimed earnestly: “I wonder why we never learn to be what we mean to be. It seems as if life were one long season of acting hatefully and trying to make amends. Why can’t we be good?”
“Give it up.” Yawn. “And, dearie, I’m so sleepy I don’t know what to do with myself. Aren’t you?”
“I dare not go to sleep, I expect we have been robbed of everything we possess!” As the recollection returned to her of the real cause for her present visit, Isabelle felt her timidity also return, and, shaking her sister to keep that drowsy one’s eyes open till she could tell the whole story, repeated what she had already tried twice to make the somnolent secretary comprehend.
“Ye-es. H’m-m!” Yawn. “Well, we’re—all—right, aren’t—we?”