ie was beside them. But what an Auntie! Pale, looking
older by ten years than when she had left them, breathless, her lips for
a moment trembling so that she could not speak. The girls' warm words of
welcome died away as they gazed at her in terror.

"Auntie, Auntie dearest, what is it; oh, what is it?" they exclaimed,
while visions of every possible and impossible misfortune--a telegram
with bad news of papa or Ralph taking front place as the worst of
all--rushed before their imaginations with the inconceivable rapidity
with which such speculations picture themselves at such times of
excitement. Auntie struggled for self-control.

"No, no--not bad news," she whispered at last, in answer to some all but
inaudible breath which had perhaps escaped the poor children's lips.
"You must--oh, you must forgive me. It was all my own fault. I should
not have gone."

"Oh Auntie, Auntie," cried Molly, by this time in sobs, "what is it
then? Have you been run over?"

"How could Auntie be here if she had been?" said Sylvia, hardly able to
help smiling, even in the midst of her fright, at the Molly-like
question. "But oh, Auntie, do try to tell us."

Auntie was a little calmer by now. She looked up with a piteous
expression in her still white face.

"My dears, my dears," she said, "you must not be vexed with me, and yet
I feel that you have a right to be so. I have had such a misfortune--I
have lost--just now, on my way to or from the bank, I don't know
which--I have _lost_ dearest mother's--your grandmother's old watch! And
with it the locket that was always attached to it, you know--the one
with _her_ great-grandfather's and his daughter's hair."

"I know," said Molly, "gray hair on one side and bright brown like
Sylvia's on the other. Oh, Auntie, Auntie--_poor_ Auntie."

And Sylvia flung herself down beside poor Auntie and burst into tears of
sympathy. It was sweet to Aunt Laura, even in the midst of her acute
distress, to feel that their first thought was not for the loss
itself--much as it could not but touch them--but of sorrow for _her_.

"Grandmother's old watch--grandmother dear's old watch," repeated the
two girls, as if they could not believe it. The old watch they
remembered all their lives, whose face was almost as familiar to them as
that of grandmother herself--the watch and locket which seemed almost a
part of her--it was terrible, it was too bad to be true!

"How did it happen?" said Sylvia, trying to choke