"Oh, how mean! To steal Rose's watch and Laddie's pin!" cried Russ.
"What makes them steal, Mother?" queried Vi.
"Because they have not been taught that other people's possessions are sacred," said Mrs. Bunker gravely. "You know, I tell all you children not to touch each other's toys or other things without permission."
"Well!" ejaculated Vi, "Laddie took my book."
"I didn't mean to keep it," cried her twin at once. "And, anyway, it wasn't a sacred book. It was just a story book."
"Stealing is an intention to defraud," explained their mother, smiling a little. "But Vi's book was just as sacred, or set apart, to her possession as anything could be."
"I—I thought sacred books were like the Bible and the hymn book," murmured Laddie wonderingly.
Which was of course quite so. It took Laddie some time, he being such a little boy, to understand that it was the fact of possession that was "sacred" rather than the article possessed.
However, Mother Bunker wrote the letter to Captain Ben, asking him to hunt all about the bungalow for both the wrist watch Rose had lost and the stick-pin Laddie was so confident now that he had left sticking in the cushion on the bureau in the bedroom. She also wrote a letter to Norah asking the cook to look for the lost articles.
"Now what will you do with them?" asked Vi, referring to the letters.