CHAPTER V. FATHER AND DAUGHTER
It did seem to Janice Day at this time as though trouble after trouble was being heaped upon her young shoulders. Miss Peckham and her search for her Sam was, of course, a small matter compared to the loss of the treasure-box and the heirlooms in it.
Janice waited eagerly for daddy to come home and report on this matter; and his report, when he did come, sunk Janice's heart fathoms deep in an ocean of despair.
"Oh, Daddy, it can't be!" she cried, sobbing against his coat sleeve in the hall. "Olga wouldn't be so wicked! How could she?"
"It is pretty sure that she has left town and has left no address behind her. It looks as though she had deliberately tried to efface herself from the community," said Mr. Broxton Day slowly. "Are you sure, Janice, that the box cannot be found?"
"Oh, Daddy! I've looked everywhere. Dear Mamma's picture that I loved so much! And her, diary I"
"More than that, daughter, more than that," said her father, his own voice breaking. "I should have been more careful about allowing you to take the box. There was something else—"
"Oh, Daddy! what? I didn't know there was a secret compartment in the treasure-box," she added wonderingly.
"You would scarcely understand, my dear," he told her with a heavy sigh. "It was but a shallow place. There were letters in it—letters which I treasured above everything else in the box. Letters your Mamma wrote me before you were born, when I was away from home and she thought she might never see me again. We were young, then, my dear; and we loved each other very much."
His voice trailed away into silence. The girl, young as she was, was awed by his grief. She suddenly realized that her own sorrow over the lost treasure-box was shallow indeed beside her father's despair.