"Had we better?" asked Betty, with instinctive delicacy. "It may be something she won't want us to know."
"Oh, don't be silly," cried Mollie, impatiently, shoving the three girls before her through the doorway. "You know as well as I do that we haven't any secrets from you. Oh, what can be the matter?"
They found Mrs. Billette in the library where her small daughter, Dora—nicknamed Dodo, and one of a pair of exceedingly mischievous twins—ran to tell her of Mollie's timely arrival.
The girls followed hesitatingly, as Mollie rushed forward and threw her arms about her mother's neck, crying: "Mother, dear, what is it? Dora says you have been crying and that you have been telephoning for me all over. Oh, I wish I had known! We would have run all the way."
"Oh, I suppose a few moments more or less would make no difference. It wouldn't bring back the silver," said Mrs. Billette, quietly. Hysterics had given place to a sort of despairing resignation. "Only, at first, I felt as if I must talk to some one about it. The twins didn't understand, of course, and I couldn't very well talk to Jane."
"But, Mother, what is it?" Mollie demanded again. "Has Aunt Elvira died or has Paul caught the mumps, or——"
"Of course not, Mollie! How silly of you," her mother broke in, impatiently. "Aunt Elvira will probably live another twenty years. And as for Paul's having the mumps——"
"Then what is it? Have we been robbed?" Mollie's little foot tapped a sharp tattoo on the floor.
"That is just what has happened to us," said Mrs. Billette, as the girls stared incredulously. "We've been robbed of some things that money never can replace. Oh-oh-oh, if I had only put it in a safer place! How could I have been such a fool! Oh! oh!" and Mrs. Billette, poor woman, was fast verging on another attack of hysteria.
Mollie put her arms about her mother soothingly. "There, there, Mother," she crooned. "It may turn out all right after all. But, remember, you haven't told us what is lost yet," she suggested, with a gentleness very unlike her former impatience. "I think it would make you feel much better to talk about it. Did you say it was the silver that had been stolen?"