Billie dropped the girls at their homes, as she was in the habit of doing every afternoon after school, and whirled up Cliff Street to the old Campbell homestead. On the way she passed Belle Rogers, who also lived in that fashionable section, but she did not ask her to get in and ride up the hill. Billie had a frank, open nature, but with her whole soul she distrusted that pink and white doll-baby face and those innocent china blue eyes.
In the meantime Mary had taken off her rather threadbare little jacket and hung it in the closet. Her mother was resting on the couch. She looked pale and tired that day, and Mary walked softly so as not to disturb her. Slipping off her mittens, she thrust them into her coat pocket. Her fingers encountered something and she pulled out a flat, foreign-looking pocketbook. Mary’s face turned white and she leaned against the wall of the closet and closed her eyes.
“They must have put it in my pocket,” she whispered. “What shall I do?”
“Mary, dearest,” called her mother.
“Yes, mother,” she answered, quietly slipping the purse into the pocket again. “I won’t tell her now,” she thought. “She is worried enough already.” And when presently she kissed her mother, no one could have told that the young girl was more frightened than she had ever been in all her lifetime.
The next morning Mary hurried to school without waiting for Billie and her car. She had something to study, she said. But Fannie was there before her, waiting in the locker room. Mary tried to calm her beating heart as she looked steadily at the other girl. Then, with a sudden resolution, she marched straight up to Fannie, and thrust the pocketbook into her hand.
“You put this in my pocket,” she said. “I don’t know what you have against me, or what I ever did to you, but if you ever do it again, I shall go straight to Miss Gray.”
Fannie took the pocketbook without a word, and after that a very different version of the story got out. Finally it reached Miss Gray’s ears.
But the most serious thing of all was that things began disappearing every day out of the girls’ lockers.