Don felt uncomfortable, he hardly knew why; but it seemed to him that his uncle looked at him doubtingly, and this brought a feeling of hot indignation into the boy’s brain.
He turned quickly, however, entered the office, and with his uncle looking on, searched all over the floor.
“Well?”
“There’s nothing here, sir. Of course not,” cried Don eagerly; “Mrs Wimble sweeps up every morning, and if there had been she would have found it.”
Uncle Josiah lifted off his cocked hat, and put it on again wrong way first.
“This is a very unpleasant affair, Lindon,” he said. “I can afford to lose seven guineas, or seven hundred if it came to that, but I can’t afford to lose confidence in those whom I employ.”
Don felt hot and cold as his uncle walked to the door and called Jem; and as he waited he looked at the map of an estate in the West Indies, all fly-specked and yellow, then at the portraits of three merchant vessels in full sail, all as yellow and fly-specked as the map, and showing the peculiarity emphasised by the ingenious artist, of their sails blown out one way and their house flags another.
“Surely uncle can’t suspect me,” he said to himself; and then the thought came again—“surely uncle can’t suspect me.”
“Come in here, Wimble,” said Uncle Josiah, very sternly.
Jem took off his hat, and followed him into the office.