"My basket was stolen, and a kind gentleman gave me money to buy this." Jack answered.
"Was the matches stole too?"
"Yes; he gave me money enough to buy as many as I lost."
"Who stole 'em? Do you know?"
"I think it was Tim Roach. He was hangin' round, at the time I lost it."
"Did he snatch it from you?"
"No; I laid it down a minute while I went into a cigar store to get a quarter changed for a gentleman who had just bought a box of matches, when Tim picked it up and ran away."
"I'd like to get hold of Tim!" said Peggy wrathfully. "I'd wring his neck for him, the little wretch!"
Then a new and cunning idea came to Peggy.
"I tell you what to do, Jack," she said; "just you go out to-morrow mornin' without any basket, and begin to cry, and tell people that you've had your matches stolen. Then somebody'll give you money, and you can bring it home."