“No, I know you weren’t.  But somewhere while I was shopping yesterday I lost something out of my bag.  If it dropped out here——­”

“I can assure you I picked up nothing, Miss,” declared the shop woman.

“If Ida——­”

“If Ida Bellethorne did, she is not here, unfortunately, to tell you,” said Mrs. Staples in her same manner and without a change of expression on her hard face.

“Oh, dear!” sighed Betty.

“But you don’t know that you dropped it here,” Bobby said to encourage her.  But perhaps it encouraged Mrs. Staples more!

“I have nothing more to say, Miss,” the woman declared.  “Ida not being here——­”

“Oh, well,” said Betty, trying to speak more cheerfully, “it is true I do not remember having seen it while I was here at all.  So—­so we will go to the other places.  Of course, if Ida had found anything she would have told you?”

“I cannot be responsible for what Ida Bellethorne would do or say,” replied the shopwoman grimly.  “Not having been here myself when you came, Miss——­”

“Oh, yes!  I understand,” said Betty hastily.  “Well, thank you for keeping the blouse for us.  Good-bye.”

She and Bobby were not greatly pleased with Mrs. Staples.  But they had no reason for distrusting her.  When they had gone the shopwoman smiled a most wintry smile.

“Well, I am not supposed to tell people how to go about their own affairs, I should hope,” was her thought.  “That chit never told me what she had lost.  It might have been a pair of shoes or a boiled lobster!  Humph!  Folks would better speak plain in this world.  I always do, I am sure.”

CHAPTER VIII

UNCLE DICK MUST BE TOLD

The two girls did not tell Bob Henderson all that had happened in the little shop when they first came out.  They were in too much haste to get to the other places where it might be possible that Betty had dropped her locket.  Of all things, they did not suspect that Mrs. Staples knew the first thing about it.

But they did tell the boy that Ida Bellethorne had gone away.

“Where’s she gone?” asked the inquisitive Bob.  “Couldn’t be that she found the locket and ran off with it?”

“Why, you’re almost horrid!” declared Betty, aggrieved.  “You don’t know what a nice girl Ida is.”

“Humph!” (Could he have caught that expression from waiting outside Mrs. Staples’ shop?) “Humph!  I don’t believe you know how nice she is, or otherwise.  You never saw her but once.”

“But she’s seen the horse,” giggled Bobby.

“What horse?” demanded Bob.

“Mr. Lewis Bolter’s black mare, Ida Bellethorne.”

“Oh!”

“And, oh, Bob!” cried Betty, “there’s another Ida Bellethorne, and this Ida has gone away to see her.  She’s her aunt.”

“Who’s her aunt?” grumbled Bob, who was having some difficulty just then in driving the car and so could not give his full attention to the matter the girls were chattering about.