Madge had no wish to wander far away, but unfortunately the dulness of the large linen-draper's shop that she had just left seemed to pervade its neighbours on either side; for about fifty yards there was nothing to be seen but highly respectable and uninteresting tailors' and shoemakers' establishments. Thus it came about that Madge walked almost to the end of the street before she found a shop window that held any objects of the kind for which she was looking. At last she stopped in front of a small stationer's. There, arranged among the piles of writing-paper and envelopes, were a quantity of little ornaments and toys.
Madge was growing rather old to care about regular playthings, and yet she could not resist the charms of a tiny doll's dressing-table covered with miniature hair-brushes and combs. She wondered how much it cost, and whether Betty would want to share it with her.
"John won't care for it, I suppose," she muttered to herself. "At least he will think it grander to pretend that he doesn't like such a girlish thing, though I dare say he will always be wanting to play with it. After all, one can't choose things that will suit everybody, and I know I could make such a dear little pin-cushion to stand on that table, with very small pins stuck into it in a pattern. I've got a bit of silk that would do exactly—Oh! What has happened? Oh, dear! oh, dear!"
Poor Madge! While thinking over the various ways in which she could amuse herself with the doll's dressing-table, she had been excitedly swinging the little brown bag up and down by the string. Five shillings and sevenpence, mostly in pennies, is rather heavy; an insecurely tied knot gave way, and the bag suddenly fell with a loud clatter—not to the ground, that would have been a very bearable misfortune, but through a grating in the pavement on which Madge happened to be standing at the moment.
It does not often fall to a person's lot to drop his whole fortune down a grating into someone else's cellar. It seemed to Madge as if no such terrible fate had ever overtaken a human being before. If the brown bag had contained nothing but her own money, she would have preferred leaving it where it fell, to making a fuss about recovering it. She could not bear to be thought stupid, and yet it did not seem very clever to have lost the bag of which she was professing to take so much care. But as Betty's and John's money had also disappeared down the dark grating, it seemed quite hopeless to hush the matter up. They would naturally question her until they found out the truth, and then loudly express their opinion of her selfishness if she had not made every possible effort to recover their missing property.
Madge looked despairingly down the street in the hope of seeing Miss Thompson, but only an unceasing stream of strangers passed and repassed the spot where she stood. Then she stooped down and peered through the grating. It was so dark down below that she could not distinguish the bag; only, of course, having seen it fall, and even heard the clatter of some of the coins as they rolled out, she knew it must be there. She did not like to leave the spot and go back to Miss Thompson. It seemed as if the money would be more likely to disappear in her absence; although she could not really take care of it by standing on top of the grating, yet she felt as if she could.
While hesitating what to do next, Madge happened to look through the window of the stationer's shop, and saw an elderly woman sitting behind the counter. She had spectacles on her nose, and such a very mild appearance that Madge at last decided to go in and explain the whole matter to her. If the woman would only let her run down to the cellar and pick up the money, nobody at home need ever know anything about the silly accident.