"Oh, dear mamma, what's the matter?" she said, "are we disturbing you?"
"No, darling, you are as quiet as mice," her mother replied. "But I don't know how it is—I have counted it all up again and again, and I am sure I have put down everything I have spent, but I am half-a-crown wrong. Dear, dear—what a pity it is! Just as I thought I had finished."
And again mamma sighed. She did not like to think she had perhaps lost half-a-crown, for she and Pet's father had not any half-crowns to spare.
"I will just go and see if possibly it is in my little leather bag that I always take out with me," she said. And she rose as she spoke and left the room.
Pet felt sure it was not in the little bag, for she had been standing by when her mother emptied it.
"Poor mamma," she said softly. "I can't bear her to be troubled."
Then the colour rose into her face and her eyes sparkled.
"Charley," she whispered, "keep the little ones quiet for one minute," and off she flew.
She was back in less than a minute, though she had found time to run up to her room and take something out of a drawer where she kept her treasures. Then she ran across to her mother's writing-table and slipped this something under the account-books, lying open upon it.
And almost immediately mamma came back.