o you see?"

"What, Aunt Betsey?"

"There! Look, my own rag doll!"

"Aunt Betsey, it can't be!"

"It is, Cynthy. Don't I know the work of my own hands, I should like to
ask? Well, well, I want to know! I want--to--know! Find me a chair,
Cynthy. I feel that taken aback I don't know but what I'm going to
faint, though I never did such a thing. But do tell! do tell! Oh, this
government of ours! It is an age to live in, Cynthy."

Cynthia brought her the chair, and the old lady seated herself in front
of the case.

"I do declare if there ain't the very eyes I sewed in with my own
hands--black beads they are, Cynthy--and the hair I embroidered with
fine black yarn! And the petticoats, Cynthy! The flannel one's
feather-stitched. I could tell you what that doll has on to her very
stockings. To think that something I made so innocently, away off in
Wayborough, for our little Janet, now belongs to the United States
government! Well, well, it's a great honor; almost too good to be true.
But the little satchel, Cynthy--the satchel that hung at her side with
the gold in it, where's that?"

That indeed was missing.

"Well, well, we won't say anything. I'm sure government deserves it for
all the trouble it takes, opening all those letters and bundles."

But her family thought differently, and wheels within wheels were set in
motion by which the fifty dollars in gold were recovered--the famous
fifty dollars, the loss of which had so affected the fortunes of Neal
Gordon.

It seemed that in her agitation, after the death of Silas Green, Miss
Betsey, though she stamped it generously, had put no address at all on
the package, and having sent it off by the half-blind Mr. Peters, the
deficiency had not been discovered.

He had taken it to Tottenham post-office, where both he and Miss
Trinkett were unknown, and hurried away, leaving the valuable package to
the mercies of government.

"And to think that government takes care of things and gives them back
to you when you are as careless as all that!" said Miss Betsey. The doll
she would not receive.

"No, no," she said; "let it stay where it is. I'll make another for
Janet some day. It's an honor I never expected, to have one of my rag
dolls set up in a glass case in a public building in the city of
Washington for thousands and thousands of the American people to gaze
at! Indeed, I want to know!"

The two weeks in Washington finally came to an end, and the Franklins
bade far