And Peggy conscientiously looked, Mrs. Polly Burton assisting with less energy.
But by and by, when both of them were exhausted from the most fatiguing occupation in the world—searching for and not finding a desired object—they sat down on opposite sides of the bed, facing each other.
“How much money did you have in your purse, Tante?” Peggy demanded, speaking with the severity each member of her family and her intimate friends employed in discussing practical matters with the famous but sometimes erratic lady.
“A hundred dollars,” Polly returned with emphasis. “Only yesterday afternoon when we came in from tea I counted the money carefully and then thought I put the purse in the top drawer. Afterwards I was out of my room until about ten o’clock last night and then your mother and Aunt Betty and I came up here and talked.”
Peggy frowned.
It amused her aunt to watch her. Peggy had so much the look of her father—the boy with whom Polly O’Neill had used to have so many quarrels—in spite of the difference in their coloring. If Peggy was as obstinate as he had been, it was to be hoped that aunt and niece would have few differences of opinion.
But Peggy’s attention at present was concentrated on the lost money.
“Mother will be terribly distressed when she hears, for it must have been one of the servants. And we have had all of them a long time.”
“Oh, for goodness sake, it does not matter so much as all that.” Polly spoke like an embarrassed girl. “And in any case please don’t tell mother.”
“She will not only be worried but vexed with me as well. Somehow I must have been careless, and there is nothing worse, I think, than holding other people responsible for one’s carelessness. The money will turn up or else I’ll write Uncle Richard.”