“I speak to study the hist’ry with Anne to-day,” Amelia would say.

“Anne, if you’ll go over the g’og’aphy lesson with me, I’ll work your ’zamples for you,” Madge would promise.

The girls found, too, that Anne could tell the most delightful stories.  And she was always inventing charming new ways to play.  Instead of keeping her paper dolls limp and loose, like the other girls, she pasted them on stiff cardboard, pulled them about with threads, and had a moving-picture show to illustrate a story that she made up.  The admission price was five pins, those not too badly bent being accepted.

CHAPTER IX

Through all these days and weeks, Anne and Honey-Sweet were bearing about the secret which her uncle had intrusted to her.  Sometimes it perplexed her and weighed heavy on her mind.  Sometimes she forgot all about it for days together.  Then with a start there would come, like a black figure stalking between her and the sunlight, the thought of her uncle’s strange appearance, of the danger which he said was hanging over him if she told that she had seen him—­told anywhere except at Nantes.

One night she dreamed that she told the secret.  And the words were hardly off her lips before she saw her uncle pursued by a crowd, ragged, loud-voiced, wild-eyed people, like those she and Annette had seen that day when, falling behind their schoolmates out walking, they had taken a hurried short-cut and had run frightened along a dingy street.  Anne dreamed that she saw her uncle running—­running—­running—­almost spent—­mouth open—­panting breath.  A moment more and the outstretched hands would catch him.  They were not hands, they were sharp, cruel claws about to seize him.  She wakened herself with a scream.

“No, no, no!” she sobbed, “I will never, never, never tell!”

The little package was still hidden where Mr. Mayo had put it.  Once or twice when she was alone Anne had opened it, but she always felt as if some one was looking at her and about to question her, and she put it hastily away.  There were three rings,—­one a plain heavy band of yellow gold, one set with a blazing red stone, one with a cluster of sparkling white gems.  There was a bead purse with a gold piece and a few silver coins in it.  And there was a gold locket containing the portrait of a high-bred old gentleman with soft, dark hair falling in curls about his shoulders.

One gray morning early in November, Anne was wakened by an uncomfortable lump against her side.  Sleepily she put her hand down to find out what it was.  Her fingers closed on something hard, and opening them she saw rings, locket, and purse.  The string around the packet had worn in two, the packet had come open and spilled its contents.  Anne started up in bed, wide awake now, and glanced fearfully around.  Honey-Sweet, snuggled down under the pillow, lay peacefully unaware that she had lost the treasure intrusted to her.  All the girls were asleep.  But at any moment one of them might wake.  And it was almost time for Louise to come, bringing water and towels.  Anne sprang out of bed, and with hurrying, trembling fingers tied the trinkets in the corner of a handkerchief and thrust them in the bottom of her box.