A week passed away, and the mystery of the broken bowl was as far from being solved as it had been at the beginning. It was carefully carried by three of the ladies to the old china-mender in the town of Alden, who skilfully cemented the pieces together in such a manner that the uninitiated would never discover that it had been broken; but its owners knew only too well that this treasure was no longer what it had once been, and their feelings had received a shock from which they could not soon recover.
As Miss Joanna remarked, when she examined the bowl upon its return, "Mr. Jones has done it very well; but he cannot mend our hearts, which were broken when the Middleton bowl was broken, and even if the cracks are well hidden, they will always stare us in the face!"
Though her aunts no longer thought that Theodora was actually responsible for the accident, they were quite sure that she knew who was, and they censured her severely for her silence. Even Miss Thomasine felt that she might tell them more if she would. But Teddy had already given her version of the affair, and there was nothing more to be said. She had supposed from the beginning that Arthur was the author of the misfortune, and though she did not like to doubt his word, she greatly feared that he was not speaking the truth when he denied this.
His brothers stoutly maintained his innocence when talking to Theodora, or to any one outside of the family, but with one another they acknowledged having some misgivings.
"You see, Art has been sick such a lot that I guess he is afraid to own up," said they among themselves. "He isn't just like the rest of us. Look how afraid he is in the dark, and in that spooky place in the woods, and of lots of other things. I suppose he is afraid father will punish him if he owns up, and so he's going to keep it dark as long as he can."
Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt were both greatly troubled by the affair. They knew the value of the bowl, a value which could not be made good by any amount of money, and they knew that such a rare work of art could never be replaced; and, besides, the fact that if Arthur had broken it he lacked sufficient moral courage to confess was a bitter grief to them. But the "if" was a large one, and Arthur's mother could not bring herself to believe that her boy was not speaking the truth.
Arthur himself showed plainly that he was suffering. He grew pale and lost his appetite; he started at every sound, and when he was out-of-doors he would stop constantly in his play to look about apprehensively, to peer behind bushes or trees, and to take refuge in the house did he see any one coming.
He and Teddy discussed the subject more than once, but never with any satisfactory result. It usually ended in his running to his mother to declare, with tears and sobs, that he did not break the old bowl, and he wished that he had never seen it.
In the mean time Teddy continued to ride the bicycle. Her aunts seemed to have completely forgotten having seen her in the very act. They did not mention the subject again, being absorbed in conjectures and grief about the bowl, and Theodora, apparently believing that silence gave consent, did not recall it to their minds.