“Some one has taken the box with the albums in it,” answered Mr. Martin. “It’s gone!”
“Let’s look again, to make certain,” suggested his wife. “We don’t want to make a fuss and then find the box, after all.”
“I don’t believe we’ll find it,” replied Mr. Martin, and there was a worried look on his face. “It isn’t in the car—it’s been taken out. And what to say to Mr. Cardwell I don’t know! He will be very sorry to learn that the albums are gone, for he never again can get pictures of his twin girls who are dead. And that sailor boy’s picture, too! That’s gone.”
“Oh, perhaps we’ll find the box and the albums,” said Mrs. Martin more cheerfully. “No one would really steal them—they would be of no value to any one.”
“No; and that’s what I can’t understand!” complained the father of the Curlytops. “But the albums are gone, sure enough!”
It really seemed so, for when the children—even Trouble helping—had looked through the car, the box was not to be found.
“Well, I don’t know what to do,” said Mr. Martin, walking up and down with a worried air, beside his auto. “I don’t want to go back and tell Mr. Cardwell we have lost his valuable relics. And yet it isn’t fair to him not to let him know.”
“Maybe he came here himself and got them,” suggested Ted.
“What do you mean, Son?” asked his father.
“I mean that maybe after he gave them to you he found out he was going to Bentville himself, and he came here to tell you. He didn’t see us, because we were looking at the cowboys, and he just took the box out of our car.”