"Would you mind if _I_ looked?" Mabel's eyes implored her little hostess. "You see, if it's lost it's my fault. It's almost the same as stealing. That Johnson would say it was just the same. I know he would."
"Let's all look again," said Mabel, jumping up. "We _were_ rather in a hurry this morning."
So they looked, and they looked. In the bed, under the bed, under the carpet, under the furniture. They shook the curtains, they explored the corners, and found dust and flue, but no ring. They looked, and they looked. Everywhere they looked. Jimmy even looked fixedly at the ceiling, as though he thought the ring might have bounced up there and stuck. But it hadn't.
"Then," said Mabel at last, "your housemaid must have stolen it. That's all. I shall tell her I think so."
And she would have done it too, but at that moment the front door banged and they knew that Eliza had gone forth in all the glory of her best things to meet her "gentleman friend."
"It's no use"--Mabel was almost in tears; "look here--will you leave me alone? Perhaps you others looking distracts me. And I'll go over every inch of the room by myself."
"Respecting the emotion of their guest, the kindly charcoal-burners withdrew," said Gerald. And they closed the door softly from the outside on Mabel and her search.
They waited for her, of course--politeness demanded it, and besides, they had to stay at home to let Mademoiselle in; though it was a dazzling day, and Jimmy had just remembered that Gerald's pockets were full of the money earned at the fair, and that nothing had yet been bought with that money, except a few buns in which he had had no share. And of course they waited impatiently.
It seemed about an hour, and was really quite ten minutes, before they heard the bedroom door open and Mabel's feet on the stairs.
"The way she walks," said Gerald. You can, in fact, almost always tell whether the thing has been found that people have gone to look for by the sound of their feet as they return. Mabel's feet said "No go," as plain as they could speak. And her face confirmed the cheerless news.
A sudden and violent knocking at the back door prevented any one from having to be polite about how sorry they were, or fanciful about being sure the ring would turn up soon.