ey. That's all."

"Why it's as simple as A B C!" broke out Madge. "Just listen, you
little silly, and I'll tell you. I took five shillings and sevenpence,
didn't I?"

"Of course you did! In the brown bag," answered Betty, although nobody
had spoken to her.

John merely nodded his head to show that he was following the argument
up to this point.

"And as the money belonged to us all we were all to share alike,"
proceeded Madge rapidly. "So I got a ship and a doll and a knife, each
costing a shilling. And we had one apiece. That's three shillings.
Then the whip and the trumpet and the tea-pot cost sixpence each. That
comes to four shillings and sixpence. And the packets of sugar-plums,
and pipes for blowing soap-bubbles, come to tenpence. That makes five
shillings and four-pence. And--and--"

"And that's all!" interrupted John. "But you took five shillings and
sevenpence in the brown bag, you know. I remember counting it; didn't
we, Betty?"

"Oh, I'm well aware of that!" cried Madge impatiently. "If you will
only just keep quiet I can make it right in a moment. I must have
added up wrongly while you were chattering." And spreading all the
purchases out on the table she tried to count them more carefully over
again, repeating their prices as she did so. But it was no use. Try
as she might her accounts would not come perfectly right. There was
threepence missing, and Madge could not account for it at all.

"It must have slipped out of the bag and be lying in a corner of that
cellar," said Betty with considerable reason. "Threepence is such a
very tiny bit of money you would never see it in the dark, or even by
the light of one candle."

"Perhaps not. I suppose that is what has happened," admitted poor
Madge. She was ready to cry with mortification at having had the worst
of the argument with John, in spite of his being two years younger than
herself and very much her inferior in arithmetic. Besides, she knew
that if she had, as seemed most probable, left a threepenny piece on
the cellar floor, it was all owing to that annoying fit of nervousness
that had suddenly come over her in the dark. At the time that she
picked up the money she was still suffering from the fright caused by
the sudden appearance of the kitten, and no doubt had been too much
upset to notice very carefully what she was doing. But she did not
like to explain all this to the twins, who were in the habit of looking
upon h