“No,” confessed Bobby, “I suppose that is so.”

“And our weeping won’t find my locket,” sighed Betty.  “Dear me!  If I did drop it in Stone’s place I hope they have saved it for me.”

But the locket was not to be found in that shop, either.  Nor in the two others which Betty Gordon had visited the previous day.  This indeed was a perfectly dreadful thing!  The plainer it was that the locket could not be found, the more repentent and distracted Betty became.

“I shall have to tell Uncle Dick—­I shall have to,” she wailed, when Bob drove them away from the last place and all hope was gone glimmering.  “Oh, dear!  It is dreadful.”

“Don’t take on so, Betty!” Bob begged gruffly, for he could not bear to see the girl actually cry.  “I’ll tell him if you are afraid to.”

“Don’t you dare!” she flared out at him.  “I’m not afraid.  Only I dread it.  It was the nicest present he ever gave me and—­and I loved it.  But I did not take proper care of it.  I realize that now, when it is too late.”

Bob remained serious of aspect after that.  That his mind was engaged with the problem of Betty’s lost trinket was proved by what he said on the way back to Fairfields: 

“I suppose you spoke to all the clerks you traded with in those stores, Betty?”

“Why, yes.  All but Ida Bellethorne, Bob.”

“And Mrs. Staples said she didn’t know anything about Betty’s locket,” Bobby put in.

Of course, this was not so; but Bobby thought she was telling the exact truth.  The two girls really had not explained Betty’s loss to Mrs. Staples at all.

“The English girl going off so suddenly, and on such a wild-goose chase, looks kind of fishy, you know,” drawled Bob.

“She thinks she is chasing her aunt!” Bobby cried.

“Maybe.”

“You don’t even know her, Bob,” declared Betty haughtily.  “You can’t judge her character.  I am sure she is honest.”

“Well,” grumbled Bob, “being sure everybody is honest isn’t going to get you that locket back, believe me!”

“That’s horrid, too!  Isn’t it, Betty?” demanded Bobby.

“It’s sort of, I guess,” said Betty, much troubled, “But, oh, Bob!  I don’t want to think that poor girl found my locket and ran away with it.  No, I don’t want to believe that.  And, anyway, it doesn’t help me out a mite.  I’ve got to tell Uncle Dick before he notices that I don’t display his pretty present any more.  Oh, dear!”

“It’s a shame,” groaned Bobby, holding her chum’s hand tightly.

“Guess there are worse things than measles in this world,” observed Bob, as he stopped the small car under the porte cochere at Fairfields.

CHAPTER IX

THE LIVE WIRE OCTETTE

It was not an easy thing to do; but Betty Gordon did it.  She confessed the whole wretched thing to Uncle Dick and was assured of his forgiveness.  But perhaps his serious forgiveness was not the easiest thing for the girl to bear.