“A what?”
“A cestificut—those kind of papers we found in the cave.”
“Oh, a certificate. Why Chicken Little a certificate—I don’t know whether I can make you understand. There are several kind of certificates, but those were bank certificates.”
Chicken Little looked decidedly puzzled.
“Those pieces of paper showed that Alice’s father once owned part of the National Bank here.”
“Doesn’t he own it now?”
“Mr. Fletcher is dead, as you know, and the question is whether they belong to Alice as her father’s heir. That is what we were talking about last night. But don’t bother your small head about such things.”
Jane combed away industriously for several minutes giving him sundry pats and smoothing his forehead deftly.
“Alice says if they was really hers she could sell them and go to school and be like other people. I think Alice is like other people now—don’t you?”
“Alice—like other people?” Dr. Morton had been lost in the depths of his newspaper. “Alice is all right—a very worthy girl—but I doubt if she has any more chance of getting hold of that bank stock than the man in the moon. The papers were evidently stolen from Gassett’s house along with the silver. It does look queer that they are still in Donald Fletcher’s name, but people are mighty careless sometimes about business affairs—though it isn’t like Gassett—he looks out for his own pretty carefully.”