THE SUSPICIOUS JACKDAW.
Patience looked very happy and peaceful in her sleep, and the suspicious old lady could find nothing lying about to excite her doubts. The child had left her box open, and Madam Mortimer, though she did not choose to touch or move anything in it, used her eyes very sharply, and scrutinized its contents with astonishing deliberation. At length Patience moved, and Madam Mortimer, shading her candle, stole away again, feeling that she had done something to be ashamed of.
The next morning she sent for Patience, and said to her, 'Patience, I told you that I had lost my red necklace; I must have you to help me to search for it; but first tell me whether you know where it is?'
'I know where I think it is, ma'am,' Patience answered quite simply.
'Where?' asked her mistress; but she spoke and looked so severely that Patience hung her head and faltered, and at last said, 'She didn't know, she only thought it might be;' and when pressed for an answer, she said, 'She thought it might be in the empty side of the tea-caddy, for Jack often took things and put them into it.' While the little girl spoke she looked so bashful and confused, that her mistress was confirmed in her bad opinion of her; but she allowed her to help all the morning in searching for the lost necklace; 'for, after all,' she thought, 'I may be mistaken.'
However, the necklace was not to be found; and though the jackdaw chattered and bustled about a great deal, and told over and over again, in the jackdaw's language, what he had done with it, nobody took the slightest notice of him; and the longer she
