“But about the pocket-book, John,” said Mrs. Grey, “I have not heard you say. Did you find it, or get any trace of it?”
“Not the least. I sent an advertisement to the ‘Herald’ and another to the ‘Times,’ and stopped the drafts at the bank, and left the description, with the numbers of the checks and a few of the larger notes, at the police-office. I don’t see that I can do any more. It is a large sum, more than I can well afford to lose; but if it is gone I cannot help it. So you need not look so doleful, Polly. I shall get along without it somehow.”
“If you would only let me give you some of mine, cousin John. I have so much more than I know what to do with.”
“Have you? Well, I shall know where to come, then, when I get hard up.”
“I wouldn’t lend him any, if I were you, Polly,” said Mrs. Grey, smiling. “He’ll be sure to lose it, such a careless fellow. I always told you what would come of it, John, sticking your purse in such out-of-the-way places.”
“It was in my breeches-pocket this time, Grandma,—just where you taught me to keep it when I was a boy.”
“As if you were anything else now!” said Mrs. Grey, shaking her head at him; “and I don’t believe you know in the least where it was.”
“Yes, I do,” insisted Dr. John, “because I remember it was in the way when I wanted a dime from the bottom of that same pocket for a poor little girl at the crossing, and I took it out—”
“And never put it back again,” interrupted his grandmother. “There, I knew just how it was. You’re not fit to be trusted with a purse at all. You must leave it at home next time with Polly and I. We know better than to lay a stuffed pocket-book down upon a stage-seat, as if it was a paper parcel.”
Dr. John appeared to pay very little attention to the old lady’s raillery. He was thinking too intently,—trying to remember something, if one might judge by his knitted brows. “Yes,” he said, at length, as if he had gotten at it at last,—“yes; I am sure of it. The child at the crossing and this little Berty are the same. I thought I had seen her somewhere. And what is more,” he added, interrupting Mary’s wondering exclamation,—“what is more, I saw her again at that same crossing when I went down town this morning; and I was feeling for a dime when she dropped her broom and ran off up the street as if the sight of me had frightened her out of her wits. Look at me, Polly. Am I so very ugly? Do I look like an ogre to frighten little girls?”