oom, when Mrs. Oliver's own
maid came running in with a face like paper.

'Oh, what ever shall I do?' she cried, wringing her hands, as they
say in books, and I always thought it nonsense, but she certainly
did, though I never saw any one do it before or since.

'What is it?' I asked her.

'It's my mistress's diamond necklace,' she said. 'She was going to
wear it to-night. And then she said, No, she wouldn't; she'd have
the emeralds, and I left it on the dressing-table instead of locking
it up, and now it's gone!'

I went into Mrs. Oliver's room with her, and there was the jewel-box
with the pretty shining things turned out on the dressing-table, for
Mrs. Oliver had a heap of jewellery that had come to her from her
own people, and she as fond of wearing it as if she was slim and
twenty, instead of being fifty, and as round as an orange. We looked
on the dressing-table and we looked on the floor, and we looked in
the curtains to see if it had got in any of them. But look high,
look low, no diamond necklace could we find. So at last Scott--that
was Mrs. Oliver's maid--said there was nothing for it but to go and
tell her mistress. The ladies were in the drawing-room by this time.
So she went down all of a tremble, and in the hall there was Mrs.
Oliver looking anxious out of the front door, which was open, it
being summer and the house standing in its own park.

'Mr. Oliver is very late, Scott,' she says. 'I am getting anxious
about him.'

And as she spoke, and before Scott could answer, there was his step
on the gravel, and he came in at the front door with his little
black bag in his hand that I suppose he carried his stories in to
see if people would like to buy them.

'Hullo! Scott,' he says, 'have you seen a ghost?' And, indeed, she
looked more dead than alive. She gulped in her throat, but she could
not speak.

'Here, young woman,' says Mr. Oliver to me, 'you haven't lost your
head altogether. What's it all about?'

So I told him as well as I could, and by this time master had come
out and my Lady, and you never saw any one so upset as they were.
All the house was turned out of window, hunting for the necklace;
though, of course, not having legs, it couldn't have walked by
itself out of Mrs. Oliver's room. All the servants was called up,
even to the kitchen-maid; and those who were not angry, were
frightened, and, what with fright and anger, there wasn't one of us,
I do believe, as didn't look as they had