Belle Powers' Locket

"But now the jeweller man will have to take it," said Lily, indignantly; "and Belle didn't want to have it go 'way from her, and it's all just for the way Mabel behaved. I should think a broken locket and a broken slate were just about too much consequences of any one's naughtiness and hatefulness for one day."

"Be quiet, Lily," said Miss Ashton.

"But it's true, Miss Ashton: it all came of that old Mabel's badness," persisted Lily.

"Lily, will you be quiet?" repeated her teacher.

Lily dared say no more; but borrowing a slate for the purpose from the child who stood next her, she held it closely before her face, and from behind that shelter made two or three grimaces at Mabel, which, whatever relief they might afford her own feelings, did neither harm nor good to any one else, as they were not seen.

Still Lily's words were felt by Belle and all the rest of the class to be true. Belle's misfortune was certainly the result of Mabel's ill-behavior; and it was very hard for the poor little girl to keep down the angry feelings which seemed as if they would rise up to accuse her cousin.

And Lily's speech or speeches, and the knowledge that she was blamed by all her class-mates, vexed Mabel again, and crushed down the better feelings which had arisen towards Belle, so that she put on an appearance of complete indifference to her distress; and muttered sulkily, —

"I don't care."

"Put the locket carefully away in your desk, dear," said Miss Ashton to Belle, "and do not fret about it. Your papa will have it fixed for you, and it will be as good as ever."

Belle obeyed, putting the locket carefully in one corner of her desk, with a rampart of books raised about it; and then returned to her place, still rather disconsolate, and feeling that she was fully entitled to all the pitying and sympathizing looks bestowed upon her.

After this the business of the class went on without farther interruption, and the arithmetic lesson came to an end.

X.

A TERRIBLE LOSS

When Miss Ashton dismissed the rest of her little class for the recess which they took in the course of the morning, she told Mabel to come with her; and taking her apart into a room by herself, she talked gravely but kindly to her.

"Would you like it, my dear?" she said, "if I sent you home with a note to your mamma, saying I could no longer have you in the school?"

Mabel hesitated a moment, half-inclined to say that it was just what she would like; but calling to mind the nice plays she often had with her young school-mates, the pretty picture cards she sometimes received from Miss Ashton when she had been particularly good or recited her lessons well, and several other pleasures which school afforded, she thought better of it, and said she would not like it at all; adding to herself what she dared not say aloud to Miss Ashton, that she would carry no such note home, but throw it away in the street if it was given to her.

"And I should be very sorry to do it," said the young lady; "but, Mabel, unless you do better, I cannot have you in my school. Why, my dear, since you have been here there has been more quarrelling and disturbance than during all the rest of the time I have had the class. This must not go on; for you cannot stay with us if you will behave so as to destroy all our peace and comfort."

Mabel hung her head; but she took the reproof better than she generally received any fault-finding; and after Miss Ashton had talked a little more, setting her naughtiness and its sad consequences plainly before her, and urging her to be good and amiable for her own sake as well as because it was right, she had permission to go, and left her teacher, half-repentant, but still not quite determined to take her advice and warnings and make up her mind to be a better child.

In this perverse mood, she did not feel like joining the other children, who were playing on the piazza and out in the garden, but wandered back to the school-room by herself. She sat here a moment or two in her own seat, which was next to Belle's, knocking her feet idly against the floor, and wishing for something to amuse herself with; but still too proud or too sulky to go and play with the others. But presently she bethought herself once more of the locket, and the temptation came to her to open Belle's desk and look at it. Then Conscience whispered, "Shame! shame! Belle was so kind to you, and begged you off when Miss Ashton would have punished you."

The still, small voice made itself heard so plainly that she could not refuse to listen at first, but she tried to hush it, and at last succeeded.

"I'm not going to do any harm," she said; "only just to look at the locket, and that can't hurt it. Belle won't know it, and she won't be mad."

She opened Belle's desk and peeped in.

There lay the pretty trifle she coveted in the snug corner where the little owner's hands had so carefully placed it. Mabel looked and looked, and from looking she went to touching it. First with only one finger, feeling guilty and ashamed all the time; for with all her faults Mabel was not generally deceitful or meddling. Presently growing bolder, she took it up, shut down the lid of the desk, and sat turning the locket over and over, wishing that the jeweller were there, so that she might show it to him while Belle knew nothing about it.

Suddenly she heard a quick, running step in the hall without; and before she had time to open Belle's desk and put the locket in its place, Dora Johnson came in. Mabel dropped the locket in her lap, and threw her pocket-handkerchief over it. Dora saw nothing wrong, only Mabel sitting there with a very red face, which she supposed to arise from shame, as indeed it partly did, though it came from a cause which Dora never suspected.

"It's beginning to rain, and we all have to come in," said Dora; and the next moment the whole troop of children running in proved the truth of her words. They did not all come into the school-room; but Dora and one or two more were there, so that Mabel did not dare to lift the lid of Belle's desk again and put back the locket.

She was very much frightened, and would have been content, glad indeed, to give up the hope of any locket at all, to have had Belle's safely back where she had left it. She knew that her school-mates would all cry out shame upon her if they saw that she had meddled with the locket, and she knew that she deserved this; but she shrank from the looks and words of scorn and displeasure which she knew would fall upon her when they discovered the treachery she had been guilty of towards her dear little cousin.

So she felt and thought as she sat there with the locket hidden on her lap, and at last feeling that she must rid herself of it by some means, and fearing that Miss Ashton would return to call them to order before she did so, she rose and wandered out of the room, holding the locket fast within her handkerchief.

Most of the children were in the hall, and she went on into the cloak-room. There was no one there; and as she looked about her, wondering what she should do with the locket, the bell rang to call the class back to their places.

With no time to think, with no plan in her head, not meaning to keep the locket from Belle, nor yet seeing her way clearly to the means of getting it back, Mabel hastily dropped it in a corner upon the floor, snatched down her own hat and sacque and threw them over it; then ran back to the school-room with beating heart and crimson cheeks. No one noticed her guilty looks; or, if they did, laid them to the same cause that Dora Johnson had done, and did not speak of them.

The class in reading was now called up; and as Mabel took her stand about the middle of the row, she gave her attention, not to the task before her, but to the locket lying hidden in the cloak-room, and tried to contrive a way out of her difficulty.

Suddenly a thought struck her, and she gave a great sigh of relief. This was the day on which Belle took her music-lesson after school was dismissed: it might be that she would not discover that the locket had been taken out of her desk till she came to go home; and she, Mabel, would have time to put it back after the other children had left.

Miss Ashton's voice roused her, calling back her thoughts to her lesson and reminding her that it was her turn to read; but she did not know where the place was, and when it was pointed out to her by Belle, she stumbled and blundered over words that she knew quite well, and read most disgracefully, finishing her performance with a new burst of crying.

Miss Ashton did not find fault with her, believing perhaps that she really could not help it, but passed on to the next. Would she have taken it so quietly if she had known the true cause of Mabel's excitement? The child could not help asking herself this question, or wondering what punishment she would be called on to bear if her teacher knew all. Not for twenty lockets such as Belle's would she have borne the miserable feelings from which she was suffering now.

So the time dragged on, heavily, heavily, till it was the hour for dismissal; and the little ones prepared to go home.

Mabel watched Belle's every motion, scarcely daring to hope that she would not discover her loss before she went downstairs to her music-lesson; but Belle, never dreaming but that her treasure lay safely hidden in the far corner where she had left it, put books and slate back into her desk in haste, and at last followed Miss Ashton from the room.

Then Mabel hurried into the cloak-room, a new fear taking hold of her, as fears without number or reason ever will of the guilty. Suppose any of the other children had lifted her sacque and found the locket beneath it! No: it lay upon the floor still, – not just as she had left it, it seemed to her fearful, suspicious eyes. But no one turned upon her with accusing words or looks; and she believed herself safe, if she could but manage to be the last child to go.

Nanette, her nurse, who was waiting for her, was too well used to her freaks to be much surprised when she declared she was not going home just yet; and stood by, with what patience she might, to await the pleasure of her hard young task-mistress, who plumped herself down on the floor upon her sacque with a look of dogged determination, which Nanette knew well would change to one of furious passion if she were crossed.

As Lily Norris left the room, she could not refrain from a parting shot at Mabel.

"Mabel," she said, "in the 'Nonsense Book' there is a picture of a sulky girl sitting on a carpet, and the reading about her begins, and I just b'lieve the man what took her portrait, and made the poetry about her, meant you;" with which, mindful of the fact that Mabel's hand was swift and heavy when she was provoked, she flew from the room, chuckling over her own joke, and joined in her laughter by those who followed her, Lily being considered a great wit.

'There was a young lady of Turkey,
Whose temper was exceedingly murky;'

So had Mabel set all her young school-mates against her that there was scarcely one who did not enjoy a laugh at her expense. But just now Mabel was too much troubled about another matter to vex herself concerning Lily's tantalizing words; and she was only too thankful to see all the children leave the cloak-room one after another.

The moment the last one had disappeared, she ordered her nurse to go out and stand in the entry; sprang to her feet and snatched up the sacque, intending to run with the locket and pop it into Belle's desk without loss of time.

But – there was no locket there!

She shook out her sacque and turned it over and over, looked in her hat, searched all about the corner, and then threw her eyes hastily around the room; all in vain. The locket was certainly gone; and the next moment a cry, half of rage, half of alarm and despair, brought Nanette back to the room.

"What is it?" she asked, seeing by the child's face that it was no ordinary fit of temper that ailed Mabel.

"It's gone! Oh, it's gone!" sobbed Mabel, wringing her hands and looking the very picture of distress.

"But what is gone? What have you lost?" asked the maid.

Then Mabel recollected herself, and cried less loudly: she would not have even Nanette know how naughty she had been, how meanly she had acted towards the dear little cousin who had been so kind to her; for, mingled with her own fears for herself, there was a feeling of deep remorse for the trouble she had brought upon Belle.

What would the latter say when she should discover her loss?

And, oh dear! oh dear! what was she to do herself?