“No, I have not. I have a story to tell you about that, and I was just forgetting it. I do hope and trust you won’t really mind.”
“Oh, what is it? You know I am quite likely to get into a scrape about that horrid thimble as well as everything else. What is the story? The thimble isn’t yours. You surely haven’t lost it!”
“Nothing of the kind. You look as though you thought I had stolen it. Mean as I am, I am not quite so bad as that. Now let me tell you. Becky, poor old girl! saw it. She’s always mad about finery of any sort, and her people are rich as rich. I had the thimble in my pocket, and she was snuggling up close to me in her nice, engaging little fashion, and she felt the thimble hard against my side, much as I felt it when it was in your pocket. In she slipped her little bit of a white hand and drew it out. I never saw any one so delighted over a toy of the sort in all my life. It fitted her little finger just to a nicety.
“‘Why,’ she exclaimed, ‘I never, never saw a thimble like this before; did you, Nancy?’
“‘Guess not,’ I answered. ‘It’s a cunning one, isn’t it?’
“She kept turning it round and round, and looking at it, and pressing it up to her cheek, and trying to see her own reflection in that wonderful sapphire at the bottom of the thimble. Then what do you think happened? I own it was a little sharp of her, but of course you can’t be so unfriendly as to mind. She took the precious little toy and put it into a dear, most precious little box, and covered it over with soft, soft cotton-wool, and placed a sweet little lid on the top. Dear me, Pauline! you needn’t open your eyes any wider. And when she had secured the little box, she wrapped it in brown paper, and twined it, and sealed it, and addressed it to her sister Josephine in London.”
“Then she stole it,” said Pauline.
“Not a bit of it. What a narrow-minded girl you are! Just hear my story out. Becky sent the thimble to Josephine to their house in Bayswater, with directions that Josephine was to take it to their jeweller, Paxton, and ask him to make another in all particulars precise ditto the same. You understand? Precise ditto the same—sapphire, gold, turquoise, and all. And this beautiful thimble is to be worn on the dear little middle finger of Becky’s dear little white hand. When it is faithfully copied you will have the original thimble back, my love, but not before. Now, then, ta-ta for the present.”
Nancy ran off before Pauline had time to reply. She felt stunned. What did everything mean? How queer of Nancy to have suddenly turned into a perfectly awful girl—a sort of fiend—a girl who had another girl completely in her power; who could, and would if she liked, make that other girl wretched; who could and would ruin that other girl’s life. There was a time when the midnight picnic seemed the most delightful thing on earth; but it scarcely appeared delightful now to poor Pauline, whose head ached, whose arm ached, and whose whole body ached. What was she to do?
When she re-entered the shrubbery, her unhappy feelings were by no means lightened to see that Penelope was waiting for her. Penelope stood a little way off, her feet firmly planted a little apart, her straw hat pushed back from her sunburned face, her hands dropped straight to her sides.