“No proof! I’d like to know what you call it? Mother left her ring on the table in that little room. The only one in it, besides our girls, was the Gypsy. The ring is gone—the Gypsy is gone—what else can you get from that? Things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.”
“Well, I, myself, think she might have taken it,” went on Blake, “in spite of the fact that she had a nice face. But that isn’t proof. Suppose they say they haven’t it—that she hasn’t it—what are you going to do?”
Phil stopped short in his quick walk toward the outskirts of the town where the Gypsy wagons had been drawn up for the last week.
“Why—er—why,” he began, “I suppose perhaps maybe we had better take a policeman with us. He’ll be sort of impressive, you see. Yes, I guess we will. Wish I’d thought of it at first. That’s more time we’re going to lose.”
The boys turned back toward the more thickly populated part of the town, in search of a guardian of the law, of whom there were half a dozen, or more, in Middleford.
Meanwhile there was plenty of excitement at the Anderson home. Mrs. Anderson and the girls went carefully over the room in which the fortunes had been told, but only to confirm the first suspicion—the ring was gone.
“Couldn’t you have left it on your dresser, mother?” asked Mabel, with tears in her eyes.
“I’ve looked there. No, I distinctly remember laying it on the table when I put away some books,” for the little room was used as a sort of storeroom. “Jennie called me for something or other. I meant to come back and get my ring. But I never gave it another thought until you asked me about the fortune telling. Then I happened to recall that you might go in that room, to be private, and I came down. But the prophetess had gone,” she finished rather pathetically.
“And also your lovely diamond ring!” sobbed Mabel. “The one papa gave you for the wedding anniversary. Oh, it’s all my fault!”
“Not at all, Mabel!” exclaimed Mrs. Anderson. “How could you know I had left my ring there?”