Half an hour later Jacqueline was trudging stoutly through the powdery dust of the Meadows road. She was hardly conscious of the dust or the heat. She forgot that she was tired, and likely to be tireder before she reached the farm. For safe in her pocket she carried the precious gold beads that were Caroline’s, redeemed from Miss Crevey’s pokerish black drawer. She could chuckle to herself, as she remembered the cold, polite fashion in which she had laid down the five-dollar bill, and asked to have them back, and the chagrin in Miss Crevey’s sallow face as she complied—what else could she do?—and handed them over.

“All’s well that ends well,” Jacqueline told herself happily.

Right at that same hour, five by the clocks of Longmeadow, Eleanor Trowbridge walked into her grandmother’s long parlor, where the eight ladies who had made up the bridge-party were eating macaroon ice-cream and frosted cakes, and talking excitedly of doubles and slams. Eleanor was sniffling, with the very evident desire to attract attention and sympathy.

“Why, darling, what’s the matter?” cried young Mrs. Wheeler Trowbridge, who was Eleanor’s mother.

“Use your handkerchief!” bade Mrs. Enos Trowbridge, who was Eleanor’s grandmother.

“They’re—broken,” whined Eleanor.

“What’s broken? Let me look, sweet pettie,” coaxed Mrs. Wheeler Trowbridge.

“She said they were nice beads,” Eleanor declared her wrongs, “but they aren’t a bit nice. They’re horrid old ten-cent brass beads, and the clasp is broken.”

Mrs. Wheeler Trowbridge took Jacqueline’s string of beads from Eleanor’s grubby hands.

“Why, honey-bird,” she said, “these beads can’t be brass, with a clasp like this. They’re beautiful gold beads. Where did you get them?”

“It was the little girl from down in the Meadows,” said Eleanor, delighted to find that all the ladies were listening to her, at last. “She was over at The Chimnies. She’s always hanging round there, looking for Jacqueline, and she said the beads were worth ten dollars, but she’d let me have ’em for five, and I gave her my five dollars that Grandpa gave me, and she ran right off, and now I want my money back.”

She began to sniffle again. But she had lost the center of the stage. The ladies, in their crisp summer silks and organdies, were chattering all at once like magpies, and it was not about Eleanor that they chattered.

“One of those shabby Meadows children, with gold beads to dispose of?” cried Mrs. Judge Holden. “Well, I never!”

“They are really good beads,” said Mrs. Enos Trowbridge’s Boston cousin, with the air of one who knew beads intimately.

“Where could the child have got them?” asked Mrs. Wheeler Trowbridge.

“And she wanted to get rid of them in a hurry,” darkly hinted Miss Selina Fanning, who was a great reader of detective stories.

“If you want to know what I think,” said Mrs. Enos Trowbridge, in her positive manner, “I call it suspicious—very suspicious.”

Just then, when they were all a-flutter with excitement, Mrs. Enos Trowbridge’s “second girl,” whose name was Angeline, came hurrying into the long parlor.

“I hope you’ll excuse the liberty, Mis’ Trowbridge,” she said, as excited as the bridge ladies themselves, and as pleased to be excited, “but Sallie Macumber from Mis’ Gildersleeve’s wants to phone here, ’cause their phone is out of order, and it’s awful important.”

“Why, of course,” said Mrs. Enos Trowbridge, not too graciously. “Tell her she can come in. I suppose it’s a case of sickness,” she told her guests apologetically.

Sallie, all red with excitement, fluttered into the long room, and fluttered toward the desk where the telephone stood.

“Excuse me, ladies,” she spoke shrilly. “I’m sorry to disturb you, I’m sure, but our phone won’t work, and I’ve got to get the constable right away this minute.”

“Constable?” repeated Mrs. Enos Trowbridge, and lost her frigid dignity. “Why, Sallie, what’s the matter?”

“Oh, Mis’ Trowbridge!” cried Sallie, delighted to unburden herself. “Me and Hannah are so upset! There’s been thieves in our house, sure as you’re sitting there. I didn’t get round to the side-board drawers till just a little while ago—and there was a dozen silver teaspoons I tucked in under some napkins, the day we shut up the house, and they’re gone!”

“Oh, my soul!” gasped Mrs. Wheeler Trowbridge, and clutched Eleanor, as if she thought she, too, might go the way of the vanished spoons.

“Then we just glanced an eye round the place,” Sallie went on, in a voice that grew shriller with every word she uttered, “and a lot of little silver things are gone from Miss Penelope’s desk, and the snuff-box from the parlor table, and all the little hand-painted knick-knacks Miss Penelope kept in her glass cabinet, and there was some beads of Jacqueline’s I put away myself in a box, the day she left, and they’re gone, too.”

“What sort of beads?” said Miss Selina Fanning.

You could feel the silence in the room, while the ladies, who no longer rustled, waited for her answer.

“Gold beads,” Sallie answered, and I’m afraid that that was what they secretly were hoping she would answer!

“Would you know them if you saw them again?” Miss Selina pursued.

The others looked at her in admiration. Why, she was just as good as a man, and a lawyer!

“You better believe I’d know them beads,” cried Sallie. “I’ve seen Jacqueline wear ’em many a time. One big long bead, and then a little round bead, and a real pearl set in the clasp.”

Dramatically Miss Selina took the beads from the Boston cousin, and waved them under Sallie’s eyes, which grew as round as saucers.

“Are these the beads?” asked Miss Selina, in a hollow whisper.

Sallie glanced at them, clutched them, then looked round awestricken at the intent faces of the ladies.

“They’re Jacqueline’s beads, as sure as apples grow on trees,” she said. “However did they get here?”

The ladies rustled and whispered. Only Mrs. Enos Trowbridge spoke aloud, portentously.

“Some one sold them to my grand-daughter—sold them for a song—and mark my word, the person who was so eager to get rid of them, may know something about the other things that are missing from your house.”