"Perhaps they might, if this life were all," replied Lucy, seriously, "I don't think we could decide the matter, unless we could look beyond the grave, and see how we prospered there."
"Of course," agreed Annette. "He had to leave all his wealth behind him, but so does every one else."
"And he might have carried away with him something which he would have been very glad to leave behind," continued Lucy.
"Yes, if he had to carry all his sins, his money would not do him much good," replied Annette, thoughtfully: "because I suppose, even if he had enjoyed life ever so much, it would seem as nothing to look back upon from the other world. And so it will be with the person who has got Kitty's money."
"Yes, unless he repents and makes restitution," said Lucy.
"We will not suppose that any one has taken it, until we know something about the matter," said Delia, seeing that Emily was in danger of losing her self-control, and anxious for several reasons to prevent any one from coming to the same conclusion as herself. "As Lucy says, it is not fair to suspect any one on such slight grounds, and a hundred things might have happened. You know Grip, Mr. Fletcher's little dog, always tears to pieces every bit of waste paper he finds. Kitty was playing with him at the time she lost it, and he might easily have picked it up and gnawed it all to bits, before any one saw what he was about."
"To be sure," said Bella, "I never thought of that."
"Nor I, till this moment," replied Delia, "though I have often given him bits of paper on purpose to see him play with them. But now, girls, instead of conjecturing any farther as to the money which seems to be hopelessly gone; suppose we set on foot a contribution to replace it. There are so many of us that we can easily make up that sum among ourselves without any one's feeling it, and it would do her so much good. Poor child, she does not have too many pleasures at the best."
"Oh, thank you, Delia, how good-natured of you to think of such a thing," said Lucy, already repenting of having done her companion injustice, even in her thoughts. "But do you think we can raise it? Ten dollars is a good deal of money."
"We can raise as much as we can, at any rate," replied Delia. "You see here are forty boarders, to say nothing of day scholars whom we might include or not as we pleased. If we each give a quarter, there are over ten dollars at once. If the day scholars come into it—"