Danny was certainly looking for something. He bent over and let his eyes rove about the floor, right under the window that had been broken. Closely and carefully Danny searched.
Then, almost as if some one had shouted it at him, there came into Bert’s mind the thought:
“Danny’s looking for his lost birthday ring! It must have slipped off his finger in one of the snowballs he threw that day of the first storm. The gold ring stuck in the snowball, and Danny threw the snowball at the window! The ball broke the glass and came inside the balcony here. And Danny must know that! He hasn’t found his ring anywhere else, and he knows it must have been in that snowball!”
The idea excited Bert and made his heart beat faster.
“When the snowball melted,” thought Bert, still watching Danny eagerly, “the ring would drop out on the floor and stay there. It’s his ring that Danny’s searching for!”
Bert grew so excited at this thought that he made a sudden movement. His foot slipped and banged against a pew.
“What’s that?” cried Danny, jumping up. “Who’s there?”
Bert was quick enough to dodge down behind one of the pews, so that when Danny looked up he saw no one.
But though Danny saw no one, he was frightened because of the noise, and, not stopping any longer to search for his lost ring, or whatever it was he was looking for, he darted out of the balcony and down the stairs, with many a clatter of his rubber boots.
“Say, he’s running like a scared rabbit!” chuckled Bert to himself. “I wish I dared yell at him, so he’d know who it is that’s looking at him. But I guess I’d better not. I want to see if his ring is here.”