Comfort’s sobs followed her mother all the way downstairs.  “Don’t you cry so another minute, or you’ll get so nervous you’ll be sick,” Mrs. Pease called back; but she sat down and cried awhile herself after she returned to the sitting-room.

Poor Comfort stifled her sobs under the patchwork quilt, but she could not stop crying for a long time, and she slept very little that night.  When she did she dreamed that she had found the ring, but had to wear it around her aching tooth for a punishment, and the tooth was growing larger and larger, and the ring painfully tighter and tighter.

She looked so wan and ill the next morning that her mother told her she need not go to school.  But Comfort begged hard to go, and said she did not feel sick; her tooth was better.

“Well, mind you get Miss Hanks to excuse you, and come home, if your tooth aches again,” said her mother.

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Comfort.

When the door shut behind Comfort her Grandmother Atkins looked at her mother.  “Em’ly,” said she, “I don’t believe you can carry it out; she’ll be sick.”

“I’m dreadfully afraid she will,” returned Comfort’s mother.

“You’ll have to tell her.”

Mrs. Pease turned on Grandmother Atkins, and New England motherhood was strong in her face.  “Mother,” said she, “I don’t want Comfort to be sick, and she sha’n’t be if I can help it; but I’ve got a duty to her that’s beyond looking out for her health.  She’s got a lesson to learn that’s more important than any she’s got in school, and I’m afraid she won’t learn it at all unless she learns it by the hardest; and it won’t do for me to help her.”

“Well, I suppose you’re right, Em’ly,” said Grandmother Atkins; “but I declare I’m dreadfully sorry for the child.”

“You ain’t any sorrier than I am,” said Comfort’s mother.  And she wiped her eyes now and then as she cleared away the breakfast dishes.

As for Comfort, she went on her way to school, looking as industriously and anxiously at the ground as if she were a little robin seeking for her daily food.  Under the snowy blackberry-vines peered Comfort, under frozen twigs, and in the blue hollows of the snow, seeking, as it were, in the little secret places of nature for her own little secret of childish vanity and disobedience.  It made no difference to her that it was not reasonable to look on that part of the road, since she could not have lost the ring there.  She had a desperate hope, which was not affected by reason at all, and she determined to look everywhere.

It was very cold still, and when she came in sight of the school-house not a scholar was to be seen.  Either they had not arrived, or were huddling over the red-hot stove inside.

Comfort trudged past the school-house and went down the road to the old Loomis place.  She searched again every foot of the road, but there was no gleam of gold in its white, frozen surface.  There was the cold sparkle of the frost-crystals, and that was all.