"Yes, blame it all on me!" reproached Maudie, bitterly. "Here--take your old fan! I reckon it didn't cost more than a few cents, but at least I took care of it!"
"Think where you had it last, Ruth--think hard!" implored Cousin Hannah, distractedly, "I'd hate so for that expensive ring to be lost--just throwed away, you might say. I don't know what we could say to Grandma Pratt."
"I had it in the hall, I'm certain," said Ruth, dull with woe. "Of course I don't remember where or when it came off my finger."
"Then we'll go right back to the hall and search for it," decided Mr. Pratt. "Come along. No use in making so much fuss, Maudie. Wait till you're plumb certain it's gone for good."
Back to the still crowded hall they went, and poor Ruth, in bitter mortification, had to listen to Maudie's shrill announcement to all and sundry of the fact that Ruth had borrowed her diamond, and then lost it. Which came, she explained loudly, of lending things to people who weren't used to them, and couldn't understand their value.
"O," thought poor Ruth, in her despairing heart, "if I'd only listened to mother I never would have been in all this trouble--if I'd only listened to mother!"
Mr. Pratt, going to the young men who had charge of the hall, made known to them the loss, and there was much searching, but all without result--Maudie's ring was indeed gone!
Downheartedly the party trailed along home; Maudie in tears, sobbing wrathfully that she would never, never lend her things again--no matter if people did beg and pray her to do it. No indeed, she had learned a lesson!
And Cousin Hannah, with torturing insistence, kept asking over and over again if Ruth couldn't remember where she had lost the ring. She ought to try and remember, seeing that it was her own fault. She oughtn't to have worn a ring she knew was too loose for her finger.
To these questions Ruth could only answer, over and again, that she didn't know--she didn't know! Indeed she was fast becoming hysterical with fright and worry.