“Oh, I am quite well, Cousin Helen,” exclaimed Billie. “It’s mathematics, I suppose, that affects my liver.”
But Billie was more eager than she would admit to accept Mrs. St. Clair’s invitation. The truth is, the young girl’s conscience had not been easy lately. She felt that she had done something which would have grieved and displeased her father and she could not be perfectly happy until she had confessed her sins and been forgiven.
You perhaps have guessed already that the ten new five-dollar bills which Mary Price had consigned to Miss Gray’s care the morning after the robbery in the school room, was Billie’s money.
“You shall take it, Mary,” she insisted. “Aren’t we exactly the same as sisters? I don’t want the money, and I know papa would be glad if he knew.”
Billie had finally agreed with Mary that it would only make matters more complicated to tell Miss Gray that fifty dollars some one had placed in Mary’s desk, no doubt to tempt or catch her, as in the case of the twenty dollars, had been stolen by a robber almost immediately.
Older and wiser people would have told Billie that this was a very poor piece of advice, and the deed was no sooner accomplished than the two girls themselves realized that they had made a mistake. Miss Gray’s manner to Mary was cold and formal and the situation was not in the least relieved. The unhappy girl had hoped that the principal would speak to her again about the money, but the subject was never mentioned.
“It was all my fault, Mary. I advised you and forced you to do it. It was not exactly dishonest, but it wasn’t sincere, and I am beginning to think Miss Gray is suspicious of me, too.”
Another thing had happened which made Billie uncomfortably and extremely ill at ease in her mind. Burglars had broken into Mrs. Price’s home, but they had only succeeded in giving Mary and her mother a great fright, and had taken nothing.
In her heart Billie knew what the robbers really wanted. It was the box of jewels locked up in Mrs. Price’s safe.
“I have done wrong,” she kept saying to herself. “Papa always said that my heart ruled my head and that I had no judgment. I should never have burdened Mary and Mrs. Price with that wretched box. I am almost superstitious about it, because it brings so much bad luck on people. After the house party, I shall take it away.”