The tears welled out of Patience’s eyes.  “I can’t find that sixpence anywhere.”

The tears came into Martha’s eyes too.  She looked as dignified as her poulticed face would allow.  “I never knew you told fibs, Patience Mather,” said she.  “I don’t believe my mother will want me to go with you any more.”

Just then the bell rang.  Martha went crying to her seat, and the others thought it was on account of her toothache.  Patience kept back her tears.  She was forming a desperate resolution.  When recess came, she got permission to go to the store which was quite near, and she bought a card of peppermints with the Squire’s sixpence.  She had pulled out the palm-leaf strand on her way, thrusting it into her pocket guiltily.  She felt as if she were committing sacrilege.  These sixpences, which Squire Bean bestowed upon worthy scholars from time to time, were ostensibly for the purpose of book-marks.  That was the reason for the palm-leaf strand.  The Squire took the sixpences to the blacksmith who stamped them with B’s, and then, with his own hands, he adjusted the palm-leaf.

The man who kept the store looked at the sixpence curiously, when Patience offered it.

“One of the Squire’s sixpences!” said he.

“Yes; it’s mine.”  That was the argument which Patience had set forth to her own conscience.  It was certainly her own sixpence; the Squire had given it to her—­had she not a right to do as she chose with it?

The man laughed; his name was Ezra Tomkins, and he enjoyed a joke.  He was privately resolving to give that sixpence in change to the old Squire and see what he would say.  If Patience had guessed his thoughts—­

But she took the card of peppermints, and carried them to the appeased and repentant and curious Martha, and waited further developments in trepidation.  She had a presentiment deep within her childish soul that some day she would have a reckoning with Squire Bean concerning his sixpence.

If by chance she had to pass his house, she would hurry by at her utmost speed lest she be intercepted.  She got out of his way as fast as she could if she spied his old horse and chaise in the distance.  Still she knew the day would come; and it did.

It was one Saturday afternoon; school did not keep, and she was all alone in the house with Martha.  Her mother had gone visiting.  The two little girls were playing “Holly Gull, Passed how many,” with beans in the kitchen, when the door opened, and in walked Susan Elder.  She was a woman who lived at Squire Bean’s and helped his wife with the housework.

The minute Patience saw her, she knew what her errand was.  She gave a great start.  Then she looked at Susan Elder with her big frightened eyes.

Susan Elder was a stout old woman.  She sat down on the settle, and wheezed before she spoke.  “Squire Bean wants you to come up to his house right away,” said she at last.