"It does not greatly matter in this case," returned Delia, carelessly. "However, I hope the poor little thing will find her money. So many people are constantly passing over that walk, that it is very curious it should not have been picked up."
She happened to look at Emily as she spoke, and all at once a light flashed upon her mind. She was very quick witted, and a dozen circumstances at once crowded to her mind, all pointing unmistakably to the same conclusion. Emily had found the money, and had spent it to pay her debts! She went on talking, however, in the same half careless tone.
"But then a stranger, or one of the servants, might have picked it up, in which case, of course, we should hear no more of it."
"I don't quite think it is right to say that, Delia," observed Emily, who had hitherto been very silent, but who now felt the necessity of urging herself to speak. "It is never right to suspect people without reason, and Mrs. Pomeroy thinks all the servants are honest."
"Mrs. Pomeroy always thinks all her own geese, swans," replied Delia. "I fancy servants are pretty much alike about such matters."
"In this case, the wind seems to be the suspected one," said one of the girls. "It blew hard enough last night to carry away a gold piece, let alone a bill."
"The wind did not begin to blow till about nine o'clock," replied Delia, "and the bill was dropped before four. However, that is nothing. It will all come to light, sooner or later."
"I am sorry for the thief, if any one has really stolen it," said Bella Faushane, who had just come in from assisting in the vain search for the missing money; "I should not like to be the one to rob an orphan child! I should never expect to prosper afterwards."
"Ill-gotten gain never prospers," said Lucy.
"Well, I often hear people say so, but I am not so sure about it," said Annette Flower, rather doubtfully. "There was Capt. Brown, of our place—he made a great fortune by all sorts of wickedness—people said he had even been a pirate. I don't know how that was, but there was no doubt at all that he was a very bad man, yet he seemed to be prosperous enough, and he died very rich. Such cases as that seem to contradict your idea, don't it?"