“The design on the frame is Japanese.”
“Otoyo,” cried Judy, and the little Japanese, lingering near the door, crept timidly up and claimed the picture. Her face was a deep scarlet, as, with drooping head, she rushed from the room.
“Bless the child’s heart, who’d have thought she had a boy’s picture,” laughed Katherine Williams.
That very night Otoyo returned the photograph to Mrs. McLean, and with many tears confessed that she had removed it from the drawer without so much as asking permission.
“My sweet lass,” exclaimed the doctor’s wife, kissing her, “you shall have a good picture of Andy if you like, taken just lately. I am only too happy that you admire his picture enough to put it in that beautiful frame. I’m sure I think he’s a braw lad, the handsomest in three kingdoms; but I am his mother, you know, and not accountable.”
Together the two women fitted the latest photograph of the callow youth into the frame. Otoyo presently bore it triumphantly back to her room and placed it on the mantel shelf where all the world could see it. That night she slept with an easy conscience and a thankful heart. Her one dishonest deed was wiped out forever.
The untangling of one snarl in the skein of affairs generally leads to the untangling of many others. So it happened that Molly and Judy, by the turn which events had taken, were able to clear up a mystery that had puzzled them for months.
“I feel, Judy,” remarked Molly, one day, “that we ought to do something nice for Minerva Higgins, because of—you know what. We mentioned no names and never breathed it even to each other except vaguely Christmas day, you remember. But we did suspect her, and thinking is just as bad as talking when you think a thing like that, so cruel and horrible.”
Judy nodded her head thoughtfully.
“But she will never know we are making reparation, Molly,” she said. “It will have to be purely for our own private satisfaction.”