“How lovely!” ejaculated Bobby eagerly.  “I like it even better than I do your orange one, Betty.  It’s sweet.”

“It’s twelve dollars, Miss,” said the shop woman promptly.  “You can pay me and take the blouse.  I paid Ida for it.”

“Isn’t the girl who made it here?” asked Betty anxiously.

“No, she ain’t,” said Mrs. Staples in her blunt way.  “She left an hour ago.”

“Oh!  Will she come back?”

“I don’t expect her.  I am sure I cannot be changing help all the time.  She left me very abruptly.  I did not ask her to come back.”

“Why,” said Betty, wonderingly, “I thought you were her friend.  Isn’t she all alone in this country?”

“She is a girl who seems quite able to take care of herself,” the grim shopwoman said.  “Or she is determined to try.  I advised her to write to her aunt——­”

“Then she has an aunt over here?” cried Betty eagerly.

“So she thinks.  An aunt for whom Ida was named.  There was some family trouble, and Ida’s father and her father’s sister seem to have had nothing to do with each other for some years.  The aunt is a singer—­quite a noted concert singer, it seems.  Ida came to Washington expecting to find her.  She did not find the elder Ida Bellethorne——­”

“Then there are three Ida Bellethornes!” whispered Bobby in Betty’s ear.

“So she came here to help me,” continued Mrs. Staples, all the time watching Betty with a rather strange manner.  “She would better have remained with me, as I told her.  But she found in the paper last night this notice,” the woman produced a torn piece of paper from the counter and handed it to Betty, “and nothing would do but Ida must go right away to find the place and the person mentioned here.”

The two girls in great interest bent their heads above the piece of paper.  The marked paragraph was one of several in the column and read as follows: 

    “It is stated upon good authority that the great Ida Bellethorne
    will arrive at Cliffdale, New York, within a day or two, and will
    remain for the winter.”

“Why, how odd,” murmured Betty.  “And did this make Ida go away?”

“She has gone to Cliffdale to meet her aunt.  That was her intention,” said Mrs. Staples.  “Are either of you young ladies prepared to buy this blue blouse?”

“Oh, yes, indeed!” cried Bobby, who had taken a fancy to the blouse.  “I’ve got money enough.  And it was nice of Miss Bellethorne to finish it for me before she went.  I wish I might thank her personally.”

“I do not expect to see Ida again,” the shopwoman repeated in her most severe manner, wrapping up the over-blouse.  “Twelve dollars—­thank you, Miss.  Can I show you anything else?”

“Wait!” gasped Betty.  “I want to ask you—­I wanted to ask Ida Bellethorne if she saw me drop anything here in the store yesterday?”

“I am sorry she is not here to answer that question,” said Mrs. Staples.  “I was not here when you came, Miss.”