“Then Charlie and I told him that if he could sell the shawl to someone else we would like to buy instead a brooch for Mother. He said he could sell the shawl, but why buy our mother a brooch when she already had one so much finer than anything he had to offer? We told him about Mother’s brooch being lost, and he was awfully sorry. We selected a new brooch, and Mother was pleased with it and fastened it into her collar right away.
“The next morning I came into the sitting room, after seeing Mr. Simon off, to find Father and Mother talking seriously together.
“‘I can’t understand it,’ Father was saying. And I saw that Mother held in one hand the cream-colored shawl that Charlie and I had meant to buy for her.
“‘Oh, is that what Mr. Simon left this time?’ cried Belle, coming in just behind me. ‘Who gets it, Mother, Aggie or me? I think I ought to have it because I am going to be married, but Aggie will say it’s her turn because I got the lace collar last time.’
“But Mother did not answer, and we saw with surprise that in her other hand she held her brooch—not her new brooch, but the one that had been lost.
“‘It was in the box with the shawl,’ she said quietly, and looked at Father. How had the brooch come into Mr. Simon’s possession, they were wondering, and why had he returned it in this mysterious way? Had he found it the night Mother lost it and had he now repented of having kept it?
“‘You had the shawl around your shoulders the night you lost the brooch, Mother,’ Belle said. ‘Maybe the brooch got fastened in it then.’
“‘That would be perfectly possible,’ said Father gravely, ‘but how many times do you think Simon has showed that shawl in the last six months?’
“Then I found my voice.
“‘Oh, not once, Father!’ I cried. ‘He never even opened the box since he was here last time. He said so himself.’ And I told them how he had been saving the shawl all that time for Charlie and me. Mother laughed happily and said we were dear children, and Father picked up the county paper with an air of relief.