“We’ve been looking at a wreck. Don’t you want to see it?”
“Nancy Brown,” cried her friend Mary, putting her hands on Nancy’s shoulders and gazing into her face, “you’ve got a secret. I can tell by your expression. You are hiding something.”
“I’m trying to hide it, but I find it rather difficult. I feel like a bantam hen sitting on a goose egg.”
“Let’s push her off her goose egg,” cried Elinor, “and see what it really is.”
“Help, Billie, help!” screamed Nancy, while the four friends engaged in a school girl romp, and Miss Campbell, who was dozing in the grove, half opened her eyes and smiled.
“Is there anything more charming and sweeter than the sound of children’s voices out of doors?” she said to herself. She could never get used to the idea that Billie was not still the little eight-year-old girl who had spent a summer in West Haven seven years before.
In the meantime, the guardian of the box was well defended by Billie until she began to laugh, and when Nancy was taken with the giggles her father used to say she was nothing but an abandoned lunatic. The place rang with the joyous peals and the other girls were obliged to pause in the struggle and join in. Then this foolishly happy child rolled helplessly onto the ground, upsetting the box.
But there came a sudden end to the laughter, for the top of the box had sprung open and its contents were scattered on the roadside.
The girls clasped their hands excitedly and gazed at each other with wide-eyed amazement, for at their feet glittered dozens of the most beautiful jewels. There were a diamond and sapphire necklace, strings of pearls, earrings, rings, and broaches.
“Great heavens, what have you girls been doing?” exclaimed Mary.