All the time she was searching in Sammy’s closet and in the bureau drawers. She stood up suddenly and began to peer at the conglomeration of articles on the top of the bureau.
“Oh!” she cried. “It’s gone!”
“What is it, Mrs. Pinkney?” asked Agnes sympathetically, seeing that the woman’s eyes were overflowing again. “What is it you miss?”
“Oh! he is determined I am sure to run away for good this time,” sobbed Mrs. Pinkney. “The poor, foolish boy! I wish I had said nothing to him about the beets—I do. I wonder if both his father and I have not been too harsh with him. And I’m sure he loves us. Just think of his taking that.”
“But what is it?” cried Agnes again.
“It stood right here on his bureau propped up against the glass. Sammy must have thought a great deal of it,” flowed on the verbal torrent. “Who would have thought of that boy being so sentimental about it?”
“Mrs. Pinkney!” begged the curious Agnes, almost distracted herself now, “do tell me what it is that is missing?”
“That picture. We had it taken—his father and Sammy and me in a group together—the last time we went to Pleasure Cove. Sammy begged to keep it up here. And—now—the dear child—has—has carried—it—away with him!”
Mrs. Pinkney broke down utterly at this point. She was finally convinced that at last Sammy had fulfilled his oft-repeated threat to “run away for good and all”—whether to be a pirate or not, being a mooted question.
Agnes comforted her as well as she could. But the poor woman felt that she had not taken her son seriously enough, and that she could have averted this present disaster in some way.