"I--I lost an earring out of my ear that afternoon," said Mrs. Todhetley, plunging into the matter, but not without hesitation. "I think I must have lost it just about the time I was talking to you. Did you pick it up?" "No, ma'am, I didn't. I should have gave it to you if I had." "You did not carry it off with you, I suppose!" interrupted wrathful Molly; who had come in to get some eggs, under pretence that the batter-pudding was waiting for them. And whether it was Molly's sharp and significant tone, or our silence and looks, I don't know; but the woman saw it all then, and what she was suspected of. "Oh, ma'am, were you thinking that ill of me?"--and the hands shook as they were raised, and the white border seemed to lift itself from the horror-stricken face. "Did you think I could do so ill a turn, and after all the kindness showed me? The good Lord above knows I'm not a thief. Dear heart! I never set eyes, lady, on the thing you've lost." "No, I am _sure_ you didn't," I cried; "I said so all along. It might have dropped anywhere in the road." "I never see it, nor touched it, sir," she reiterated, the tears raining down her cheeks. "Oh, ma'am, do believe me!" Molly tossed her head as she went out with the eggs in her apron; but I would sooner have believed myself guilty than that poor woman. Mrs. Todhetley thought with me. She offered her some warm ale and a crust; but the old woman shook her head in refusal, and went off in a fit of crying. "She knows no more of the earring than I know of it, mother." "I feel sure she does not, Johnny." "That Molly's getting unbearable. I wonder you don't send her away." "She has her good points, dear," sighed Mrs. Todhetley. "Only think of her cooking! and of what a thrifty, careful manager she is!" The Squire and Tod got home for lunch. Nothing could come up to their ridicule when they heard what had occurred, saying that the mother and I were two muffs, fit to go about the world in a caravan as specimens of credulity. Like Molly, they thought we ought to have secured the woman. "But you see she was honest in the matter of the half-crown," debated Mrs. Todhetley, in her mild way. "She brought that back. It does not stand to reason that she would have dared to come within miles of the place, if she had taken the earring." "Why, it's just the thing she would do," retorted the Squire, pacing about in a commotion. "Once she had got rid of the earring, she'd show up here to throw suspicion off herself. And she couldn't come without returning the half-crown: it must have gone nicely against the grain to return _that_." And Mrs. Todhetley, the most easily swayed spirit in the world, began to veer round again like a weathercock, and fear we had been foolish.