“How should I?” said Berty, growing redder still, and wrenching impatiently at the detained little hand. “Give it to me, Tim; it’s mine.”
Tim looked gravely down at the pocket-book, which he had closed and fastened, and then back again at Berty’s face. The strange look there was getting a meaning in it which he did not like at all. “Berty,” said he, freeing her hand at last, and pointing with his finger to a row of gilt letters upon one side of the book, “do you see that? That’s the owner’s name and number. We’ve got to take this to the station. That’s all the business we’ve got with it.”
“You sha’n’t, Tim! It’s mine, I tell you! You’ve got no business with it at all. Give it here, I say!” cried Berty, snatching the pocket-book from his hand, and hiding it again in her bosom.
Tim made no attempt to recover it. He stood looking at Berty for a moment, with a mixture of grief and astonishment in his face, and then said, slowly, “Well, Berty Weisser, I never thought that of you, any way. It’s no better than stealing,—not a bit. Oh, Berty! Oh, Berty! come wid it to the station. Come now! Sure, you wouldn’t be a thief, I know. Come, Berty, come.”
“I won’t, Tim,” cried Berty, passionately. “It’s mine, I tell you! I found it in the street. What we find in the street is ours; you know it is. You are bad, Tim, you are cruel, to call me such names. I hate you! I won’t stay to hear you!” and the child put both hands to her ears and ran away, with all the speed she could muster, towards her home.
Tim’s first impulse, of course, was to run after her; so he followed, shouting to her to stop,—the pennies in his basket keeping up a jingling accompaniment to his cries and his pattering feet. Berty, however, paid no attention, but ran on and on, without looking round or slacking her pace, until she found herself safe in her attic, with the door closed and bolted against her pursuer.
Tim stopped at the foot of the garret-stairs, and sat down upon the lowest step, quite breathless with his chase. Uncle Teddy’s room opened upon the same landing, and the merry little Irishman sat at the door smoking his pipe in the twilight, and laughing heartily at his nephew’s ill luck. “What’s come to your sweetheart, Tim?” said he; “she tore up the stairs like mad.”
“She is mad, I think,” answered Tim, wiping his forehead, and looking ruefully up the stairs towards Berty’s room.
“Well, leave her alone for a little, and she’ll come to; it’s the way of them all,” counselled Uncle Teddy. “But what’s that you have there, Tim?”
Tim looked down at his basket, and the ghost of a smile lighted up his face again. “It’s pennies, Uncle,” said he. “I’ve set up for an apple-boy the day; and see, I made all these from the fifty cints we laid by for the shoes. There’s a dollar and ten cints.”