tty, trying to speak more cheerfully, "it is true I do
not remember having seen it while I was here at all. So--so we will go to
the other places. Of course, if Ida had found anything she would have told
you?"

"I cannot be responsible for what Ida Bellethorne would do or say,"
replied the shopwoman grimly. "Not having been here myself when you came,
Miss----"

"Oh, yes! I understand," said Betty hastily. "Well, thank you for keeping
the blouse for us. Good-bye."

She and Bobby were not greatly pleased with Mrs. Staples. But they had no
reason for distrusting her. When they had gone the shopwoman smiled a most
wintry smile.

"Well, I am not supposed to tell people how to go about their own affairs,
I should hope," was her thought. "That chit never told me what she had
lost. It might have been a pair of shoes or a boiled lobster! Humph! Folks
would better speak plain in this world. I always do, I am sure."

CHAPTER VIII

UNCLE DICK MUST BE TOLD

The two girls did not tell Bob Henderson all that had happened in the
little shop when they first came out. They were in too much haste to get
to the other places where it might be possible that Betty had dropped her
locket. Of all things, they did not suspect that Mrs. Staples knew the
first thing about it.

But they did tell the boy that Ida Bellethorne had gone away.

"Where's she gone?" asked the inquisitive Bob. "Couldn't be that she found
the locket and ran off with it?"

"Why, you're almost horrid!" declared Betty, aggrieved. "You don't know
what a nice girl Ida is."

"Humph!" (Could he have caught that expression from waiting outside Mrs.
Staples' shop?) "Humph! I don't believe you know how nice she is, or
otherwise. You never saw her but once."

"But she's seen the horse," giggled Bobby.

"What horse?" demanded Bob.

"Mr. Lewis Bolter's black mare, Ida Bellethorne."

"Oh!"

"And, oh, Bob!" cried Betty, "there's another Ida Bellethorne, and this
Ida has gone away to see her. She's her aunt."

"Who's her aunt?" grumbled Bob, who was having some difficulty just then
in driving the car and so could not give his full attention to the matter
the girls were chattering about.

"Why, see!" cried Betty, rummaging in her bag. "Here's the piece of
newspaper with the society item, or whatever it is, in it that made Ida go
away so suddenly this morning. It's about her aunt, the great concert
singer. Ida's gone to meet her where that says," and she put t