“I said a pig with one ear. No doubt you do like it. You are looking like one now, ma’am.”
The words made me gaze at Mrs. Todhetley, for the tone bore some personal meaning, and then I saw what Tod meant: an earring was absent. The lamp-light shone on the flashing diamonds, the bright pink topaz of the one earring; but the other ear was bare and empty.
“You have lost one of your earrings, mother!”
She put her hands to her ears, and started up in alarm. These earrings were very valuable: they had been left to her, when she was a child, in some old lady’s will, and constituted her chief possession in jewellery worth boasting of. Not once in a twelvemonth did she venture to put them on; but she had got them out to-day for the christening.
Whether it was that I had gazed at the earrings when I was a little fellow and sat in her lap, I don’t know; but I never saw any that I liked so well. The pink topaz was in a long drop, the slender rim of gold that encircled it being set with diamonds. Mrs. Todhetley said they were worth fifty guineas: and perhaps they were. The glittering white of the diamonds round the pink was beautiful to look upon.
The house went into a commotion. Mrs. Todhetley made for her bedroom, to see whether the earring had dropped on the floor or was lodging inside her bonnet. She shook out her grey dress, hoping it had fallen amidst the folds. Hannah searched the stairs, candle in hand; the two children were made to stand in corners for fear they should tread on it. But the search came to nothing. It seemed clear enough that the earring was not in the house.
“Did you notice, Johnny, whether I had them both in my ears when we went to the school?” the mater asked.
No, I did not. I had seen them sparkling when she got out of the carriage, but had not noticed them after.
I went out to search the garden-path that she had traversed, and the road over to the Coneys’ farm. Tod helped me, forgetting his shirts and his temper. Old Coney said he remarked the earrings while Mrs. Todhetley was talking to him, and thought how beautiful they were. That is, he had remarked one of them; he was sure of that; and he thought if the other had been missing, its absence would have struck him. But that was just saying nothing; for he could not be certain that both were there.
“You may hunt till to-morrow morning, and get ten lanterns to it,” cried Molly, in her tart way, meeting us by the bay-tree, as we went stooping up the path again: “but you’ll be none the nearer finding it. That tramp got’s the earring, Master Joe.”