“Oh!” murmured Ida Bellethorne doubtfully.

“Perhaps she will never guess she dropped it here.”

“That’s no skin off your nose,” declared the vulgar shopwoman.  “You’ve no rights in this thing, anyway.  What’s found on the floor of my shop is just as much mine as what’s on the counter or in the trays behind the counter.  I know my rights.  Until whoever lost this thing comes in and proves property, it’s mine.”

“Oh, Mrs. Staples!” cried her employee.  “Is that the law in this country?  It doesn’t seem honest.”

“Humph!  It’s honest enough for me.  And who are you, I’d like to know, a greenhorn fresh from the old country, trying to tell me what’s honest and what ain’t?  If that girl comes back——­”

“Yes, Mrs. Staples?”

“You sell her that other blouse if you want to, or anything else out of the shop.  But you keep your mouth shut about this locket unless she asks for it.  Understand?  I won’t have no tattle-tales about me; and if you don’t learn when to keep your mouth open and when to keep it shut, I’ll have no use at all for you in my shop.  Remember that now!”

CHAPTER II

THE FRUITS OF TANTALUS

Betty Gordon had glanced hastily at her wrist watch as she went out of the little store.  It was very near the minute appointed for her to meet Carter at the square.  And she had forgotten to ask that girl, Ida Bellethorne (such an Englishy name!), how to find her rendezvous with the Littells’ chauffeur.

She hesitated, tempted to run back.  Had she done so she would have been in time to see Ida pick up the little locket that Uncle Dick had given Betty that very Christmas and which she carried in her bag because it seemed the safest place to treasure it while she was visiting.  Her trunk was at Shadyside.

So it is that the very strangest threads of romance are woven in this world.  And Betty Gordon had found before this that her life, at least, was patterned in a very wonderful way.  Since she had been left an orphan and had found her only living relative, Mr. Richard Gordon, her father’s brother, such a really delightful guardian the girl had been to so many places and her adventures had been so exciting that her head was sometimes quite in a whirl when she tried to think of all the happenings.

Uncle Dick’s contracts with certain oil promotion companies made it impossible as yet for him to have what Betty thought of as “a real, sure-enough home.”  He traveled here, there and everywhere.  Betty loved to travel too; but Uncle Dick was forced to go to such rough and wild places that at first he could not see how Betty, a twelve year old, gently bred girl, could go with him.

Therefore he had to find a home for his little ward for a few months, and remembering that an old school friend of his was married to the owner of a big and beautiful farm, he arranged for Betty to stay with the Peabodys at Bramble Farm.  Her adventures as a “paying guest” in the Peabody household are fully related in the first book of the series, entitled “Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm,” and a very exciting experience it was.