She turned back into the store when Betty had gone and the door, swinging shut, set the bell above it jingling again.  A door opened at the end of the room and a tall, aggressive woman in a long, straight, gingham frock strode into the room.  She had very black, heavy brows that met over her nose and this, with the thick spectacles she wore, gave her a very stern expression.

“What’s the matter with that bell, Ida?” she demanded, in a sharp voice.  “It seems to ring enough, but it doesn’t ring any money into my cash-drawer as I can see.”

“I sold my over-blouse out of the window, Mrs. Staples,” said the girl.

“Humph!  What else?”

“Er—­what else?  Why—­why, she said she might come back for the one I am making.”

“Humph!” ejaculated Mrs. Staples a second time.  “I don’t see as that will fill my cellar with coal.  Couldn’t you sell her anything else out of the shop?”

“She didn’t say she wanted anything else,” said Ida timidly.

“Oh!  She didn’t?  You’ll never make a sales-woman till you learn to sell ’em things they don’t want but that the shop wants to sell.  And I was foolish enough to tell you that you could have all you could make out of those blouses.  Oh, well!  I’m always being foolishly generous.  Come!  What’s that on the floor?  Pick it up.”

Mrs. Staples was very near-sighted, yet nothing seemed to escape her observation.  She pointed to the twist of white tissue paper on the floor which had been twitched out of Betty Gordon’s bag.  Ida stooped as she was commanded and got the paper.  She was about to toss it into the waste-basket behind the counter when she realized that there was some hard object wrapped in the paper.

“What is it?” asked Mrs. Staples, in her quick, stern way, as she saw Ida open the twist of paper.

“Why, I—­Oh, Mrs. Staples! look what this is, will you?”

She held out in the palm of her hand a little, heart-shaped platinum locket with a tiny but very beautiful diamond set in the center of its face, and when she turned it over on the back was engraved the intertwined letters “E.G.”

“For the land’s sake!” ejaculated Mrs. Staples, coming nearer and grabbing the locket out of Ida’s hand.  “Where did you get this?”

“Why, Mrs. Staples, you saw me pick it up.”

“But how did it come there?”

“Oh, I know!” Ida Bellethorne cried, with sudden animation.  “That girl stood right there.  She opened her bag to get out her purse and she must have flirted it out to the floor.”

“Humph!” said the storekeeper doubtfully.

“Give it to me, Mrs. Staples, and I’ll run after her,” cried the English girl anxiously.

“Humph!” This was Mrs. Staples’ stock ejaculation and expressed a variety of emotions.  Just now it expressed doubt.  “And then you’d come back and tell me how thankful she was to get it, while maybe it doesn’t belong to her at all.  No,” said Mrs. Staples, “let her come looking for it if she lost it.”