Brenda, Her School and Her Club

by Helen Leah Reed

"Has it been stolen?" gasped Brenda.

"Well, not exactly stolen, although Mrs. Rosa no longer has it."

"Brenda," interrupted Nora, "I certainly begged you not to leave it there. Though I never imagined that you would do so."

"Well, Brenda," continued Miss South, "Nora received a letter this morning from Angelina, written apparently in great haste last night. What she said was very vague, but she spoke of the loss of two hundred dollars in such a way as to recall to Nora your suggestion that you might leave the money with Mrs. Rosa. Nora was so excited that she left her breakfast—so she tells me—almost untasted. She gave her mother a hasty account of what Angelina had told her, and her mother advised her to see me. The upshot was that we went at once to Mrs. Rosa's, and there we found that the young man who has been troubling her lately to pay a debt which he claimed that she owed his mother had called to see her soon after you and Nora were at the house. He caught sight of the purse that you had left with Mrs. Rosa, and when her head was turned, pulled it from under the pillow and began to examine its contents. Naturally he was astonished to find that it contained two hundred dollars, and when Mrs. Rosa saw him with the purse in his hand he refused to give it up to her. The poor woman was alone and very weak, and so completely in his power that she could not refuse when he compelled her to tell him how the money had come into her possession. When he learned that it had been raised for her at a Bazaar, and that it was to be used for her benefit he seemed very much pleased. 'It is really your own,' he said, 'or else the young ladies would not have left it with you. If it is to do you any good you had better give it to me to keep you out of prison, for that is where I shall send you for not paying your debts, unless you give me this money.' So by continued threats he finally made her sign a paper saying that she paid the money willingly to rid herself of a debt owed to his mother. He even made her think that he had done her a great favor in not trying to get the fifty dollars—the balance of the debt which he claimed."

Brenda had listened with an almost dazed expression while Miss South told this strange story.

"But he did not really take it, did he?" she murmured.

"He not only took it," said Miss South, "but we have reason to think that he has left the country with it. His friends say that he had been getting ready for weeks to go to South America, and that he expected to sail from New York this morning."

"Can't he be stopped?" asked Brenda. Her voice sounded very weak, and her face was not at all the face of the usually cheerful young girl.

"He cannot be stopped now, Brenda, and I doubt if in any case we could recover the money. He was very clever in getting Mrs. Rosa to sign that paper. If he were in Boston we might recover the money on the ground that it did not belong to Mrs. Rosa, and that therefore she had no right to give it away. But we can hardly make that a ground for any action now. Besides, I know that she thought that the money belonged to her, in some way you gave her that impression, and any testimony of hers would not help us very much if you had a case in court against young Silva."

"But she knew," moaned poor Brenda, "that the money was only to help her to go to the country. I am sure that I said so to her."