"She will be getting up her hopes and expecting us to bring back good news," said Sylvia. "Well, we may find it, Auntie. They say honest people sometimes take things at once to the nearest police-office."
But this small grain of hope was quickly crushed. The "commissaire de police" was civil, but not encouraging. The ladies would do better to wait a day or two and then apply to the "Préfecture de Police," in other words, the central office, where waifs and strays of private property, should they chance to fall into honest hands, were pretty sure to be eventually deposited.
"A day or two," repeated Auntie, appalled. "Can I do nothing at once?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "That was as Madame chose. It would do no harm to write at once, describing the lost articles and giving her address. But as for hearing of them at once, that was more than improbable. It was the eve of the New Year—the worst day of all the year on which to have such a misfortune; everybody respectable was busy with their own affairs; and yet there were lots of beggars and such like about the streets. If—even supposing," as if the supposition were of the wildest—"that the watch had fallen into honest hands, a week or ten days would probably pass before Madame would have news of it."
"And if it were deposited here," said Auntie timidly—"that does sometimes happen, I suppose?"
"If it were deposited here, it would be as if it were not here," said the commissaire sententiously. "That is to say we should send it on to the Préfecture. I have not even the right to tell you if it is at this moment here or not, though to give you pleasure," he proceeded with unconscious sarcasm, "I will declare to you that it is not."
"Then there is no use my returning here again to inquire?"
"Not the least—write to the Préfecture making your statement, and call there four or five days hence—no use going sooner," said the commissaire with a wave of his hand in token of dismissal. So Auntie and Sylvia, with sinking hearts, turned sadly away.
"Little does he understand what four or five days of suspense seem to me," said Auntie.