What she meant was that she would keep the pieces as a reminder not to be extravagant, and as she looked at the little silver mesh purse hanging at her belt she smiled to think that since she left home in the early afternoon it had been emptied of more than twenty dollars, while she had nothing to show for the money,--nothing, indeed, except her new acquaintance with Mrs. McSorley and Maggie, and some fragments of glass. II A FAMILY COUNCIL Brenda had to change from the surface car to one that would take her home through the subway. It was so late that she involuntarily stepped toward a cab standing on the corner opposite the Common. On second thought she decided to economize, since she had already had an expensive afternoon. After depositing her subway ticket she had to wait a few minutes for her car in a crowd, and some one scrambling for a car pushed some one else against her. Brenda, looking around, saw a handsome black-eyed girl with a dark kerchief pinned over her head. "Oh, I beg your pardon," she said, with a foreign accent, fumbling in a basket that she carried on her arm. Later, as the car was emerging into the light of the open space near the Public Garden Brenda's hand went instinctively toward the silver-mesh purse that she wore at her belt. It was not there, though she remembered having taken a coin from it as she bought her car ticket. Though accustomed to losing her little personal possessions, Brenda especially valued this purse, and she set her wits at work to trace the loss. She remembered the little girl with the basket, and recalled that the moment before the child had begged her pardon she had felt something jerk her belt. Had she only put the two things together earlier she might have recovered the purse; for of course the child had taken it. Yet to prove this would have been difficult. She would never have had the courage to call a policeman, and remembering the little girl's large, soft eyes, she found it hard to believe her a thief. "An expensive afternoon!" she said to herself. "My twenty dollars gone in one crash, and then that pretty purse with two or three dollars more. What will they say when I tell them at home?" Then she decided to say nothing about losing the purse. This was the kind of thing that they expected her to do, and her brother-in-law would tease her unmercifully. But Brenda was not secretive, and it was easy enough to speak about Maggie and the broken vase. The story did not lose by her telling, especially as the box with the broken pieces arrived when she was in the midst of her tale. The family was seated in the library after dinner, and each one begged for a little piece of the iridescent glass as a souvenir. But Brenda refused the request, on the plea that for the present she wished to have something to show for her money. "Although even without the vase I feel that I've gained something," she concluded.