This morning visit represented the one opportunity when she and her adored Tante might have a talk without being interrupted.
And this was why Mrs. Burton had been searching for her money. For here was her chance for bestowing a gift upon her namesake, and through her upon Dan and Billy, without family discussion or objection. Always she looked forward to this moment as one of the chief pleasures of her visit to her sister.
Not that Mollie and her husband were poor. They were unusually prosperous, owning one of the best farms in New England. But they did not have money for unnecessary things. Indeed, no matter what they might have had, they would never have permitted it to be used extravagantly. Therefore Peggy—and her adopted name will be used henceforth, since no one, not even the public, could call her distinguished aunt by any name save Polly Burton—and her brothers rarely had much money of their own to spend. Tante, however, was a delightfully extravagant person, who never had forgotten how poor she used to be herself, and how many impossible things she had then wished for.
Therefore, a few moments later, when Peggy knocked at her door, an abstracted voice bade her enter. For the purse had not even been mentally found. Yet, as far as she could recall, Polly thought she had put it in her top bureau drawer. There at present, however, it was not.
She lifted her eyes as her niece came in.
“‘Peggy of my Heart,’ look in the bureau drawer and find my pocketbook,” she began nonchalantly, knowing that it was a wise method to pursue in persuading another person to find a lost treasure. Better to begin by not confusing the searcher with the sense of loss.
So Peggy looked for five minutes and, being a matter-of-fact person, she looked thoroughly.
“It isn’t here,” she announced, with the conviction characteristic of her.
Her aunt waved a vague hand.
“Be sure to look everywhere, dear.”