“My dear child, seeing is believing.  I assure you there are only two pounds one shilling and a halfpenny in the till.  I scarcely took a penny this morning, and that nineteen-and-sixpence makes it impossible for me to pay my rent, as I meant to do, to-day.  Who can have come in and stolen very nearly a pound’s worth of my hard-earned money?”

“Nobody, mother dear.  Do let me examine the till.”

“Are you quite positive that no one came into the shop?”

“Nobody, mother.”

“You did not leave the shop even for a moment?”

“Yes; I went to sit in the parlor.”

“Oh, Susy? there you are!  I trust you with my house and property, and you leave the shop without any one in it Did you lock the till?”

Susy had an unpleasant memory of having found the till open when she returned to attend to a customer.

“No” she said, hanging her head.

Mrs. Hopkins uttered a heavy sigh.

“Oh, dear!” she said.  “And as you sat in the parlor you could see the shop.  You did not leave the parlor, did you?”

For one minute Susy remembered that she had gone upstairs for an exercise-book, but she determined not to tell her mother of this further enormity.

“I was either in the shop or in the parlor all the time.  I only went into the parlor because I could not do my exercises in the shop.  But I sat where I could see everything.”

“You couldn’t have done so.  This money would not have gone without hands.  How am I to manage I don’t know.  I have lost a large sum for such a poor woman.”

Susy pitied her mother, tried to assure her that the fault was not hers, was convinced that the money would be found, and went on talking a lot of nonsense until Mrs. Hopkins fairly lost her temper.

“Examine the drawer for yourself” she said.  “I tell, you what it is, Susy, I won’t be able to buy you a new winter frock at all this year; and you will have to have your boots patched, for I can’t afford a new pair.  I was trying to collect a pound towards your winter things, but this puts a stop to everything.”

“Mother doesn’t know what a lovely blouse I’ve got,” thought Susy.  “When she sees me in that she’ll be quite cheered up.”

The moment she thought of the blouse the little girl felt a frantic desire to run upstairs to look at it.

“Mother,” she said, “I don’t mind a bit about the winter dress; and if my boots are neatly patched and well blacked every day, I dare say I can do with them a little longer.  And I will sit with you this afternoon, mother, and help you to sew.  I can’t understand who could have stolen the money.  Perhaps it is a practical joke of Tom’s; you know he is fond of doing things of that sort now and then.”

“No, it isn’t, for I asked him.  Who can have come into the shop?  Do you think you fell asleep over your work?”

“Oh, no.”

“Then it is a mystery past bearing.  If nobody came in, and you never left either the shop or the parlor, that money was taken out of the till as though by magic.”