“I’ll take all the letters you want, but I won’t take the box, because whatever’s in it, it’s yours.” There was something different and set about Wally Jim this morning. Almira sighed resignedly, and with painstaking labor proceeded to print her letter of repentance.
“You have got back Botsey, dear,” said the mother, “so try to forget.”
“I’ll never play with Botsey again. I’ll give her away first.”
In an incredibly short time they heard Jim’s oars again, and Miss May stepped on deck. She was holding out her arms to Almira, and there were tears in her eyes.
“Dear child, I didn’t like the idea from the very first, but Mrs. Lenox does so much for us. You’ll be all the better for the sharp experience, and you have really shown your repentance. Now let’s open the box and see exactly what you did.”
Quite cheerfully, all the miserable feeling gone, Almira brought scissors, cut strings, pointing out the while the iniquities of hard knots and covered features.
What! Queeny! From the bottom of the river, dry, clothed, and with her two eyes shut! Almira looked at Miss May and at Wally Jim, grinning over Miss May’s shoulder.
“What has happened now?” asked Mrs. Wing.
“Tell your story, Jim,” said Miss May.
“I was drifting some way off behind you all,” said Jim, “and maybe sleeping some, when who should swim up to the skiff with something in his mouth but Sweepins. It was Queeny, but as she’s cellyloid, only her clothes were wet. I puzzled out that somehow she hadn’t gone back to Miss May, and that she ought to. So I took her, and Miss May says, ‘If this is Queeny, what’s in Almira’s box?’ And we looked, and there was Botsey.”