We were still some way from home when the church clock chimed a quarter to two. Suddenly the nurse stopped, put her hand into her pocket, and looked very much frightened. “I’ve left the book,” she said, “left it on the bank; run—run directly—make haste—don’t lose a moment, or it may be gone.” I stood still; for I felt angry at having been scolded so undeservedly. “Go! go this instant!” I was too late; the book was gone! I scarcely dared to go back. “Not find it!” said the nurse, when I came up to her; “it must be there; you’ve done this on purpose.” When we had reached home, she flung the baby hurriedly into my arms. “I’ll go myself,” she said. The book I had seen her take out of her pocket looked very much like one placed on a side-table in the room of which I had charge, and so great was my curiosity to know if it really were the same, that I could not resist going down to see; so putting the baby (who had begun to cry again) upon the bed, and telling the little ones to sit still for a minute, down I went. The book was not on the table. I was sure that I had dusted and placed it there that very morning, and I now felt certain that _that_ book was the lost one. The nurse returned, but without the book. She seemed very much hurried, and was very cross. She could not have been more so if the book had been lost by any fault of mine. She asked me if I knew the name of it. I told her that I did not; taking care not to mention my suspicion—nay, my certainty—that it was the very book I had dusted and placed on the table that morning. The next day a great change seemed to have come over both the nurse and the cook; their manner was much kinder than ever it had been before. Neither of them said a cross word; yet I was almost certain that the nurse had been telling the cook that I had overheard what she had said to my mistress. The cause of this change puzzled me at first, but I soon suspected that they each wanted to coax me; the one to say nothing about “the large appetite,” the other about the lost book.