aking a face
at her? If Kate answered "No"--and, of course, she would say "No"--what
a position! How undignified! Then again Constantia suspected, she was
almost certain that Kate went to her chest of drawers when she and
Josephine were out, not to take things but to spy. Many times she had
come back to find her amethyst cross in the most unlikely places, under
her lace ties or on top of her evening Bertha. More than once she had
laid a trap for Kate. She had arranged things in a special order and
then called Josephine to witness.

"You see, Jug?"

"Quite, Con."

"Now we shall be able to tell."

But, oh dear, when she did go to look, she was as far off from a proof
as ever! If anything was displaced, it might so very well have happened
as she closed the drawer; a jolt might have done it so easily.

"You come, Jug, and decide. I really can't. It's too difficult."

But after a pause and a long glare Josephine would sigh, "Now you've put
the doubt into my mind, Con, I'm sure I can't tell myself."

"Well, we can't postpone it again," said Josephine. "If we postpone it
this time--"

Chapter 3.XII.

But at that moment in the street below a barrel-organ struck up.
Josephine and Constantia sprang to their feet together.

"Run, Con," said Josephine. "Run quickly. There's sixpence on the--"

Then they remembered. It didn't matter. They would never have to stop
the organ-grinder again. Never again would she and Constantia be told to
make that monkey take his noise somewhere else. Never would sound that
loud, strange bellow when father thought they were not hurrying enough.
The organ-grinder might play there all day and the stick would not
thump.

"It never will thump again,
It never will thump again,

played the barrel-organ.

What was Constantia thinking? She had such a strange smile; she looked
different. She couldn't be going to cry.

"Jug, Jug," said Constantia softly, pressing her hands together. "Do you
know what day it is? It's Saturday. It's a week to-day, a whole week."

"A week since father died,
A week since father died,"

cried the barrel-organ. And Josephine, too, forgot to be practical and
sensible; she smiled faintly, strangely. On the Indian carpet there fell
a square of sunlight, pale red; it came and went and came--and stayed,
deepened--until it shone almost golden.

"The sun's out," said Josephine, as though it really mattered.

A perfect fountain of bubbling not