We sat together in Mrs. Todhetley's bedroom at Dyke Manor, the door bolted against intruders: she, in her astonishment at the tale I told, hardly daring to touch the earring. It was Saturday morning; we had come home from Worcester the previous evening; and should now be off to school in an hour. Tod had gone strolling out with the Squire; which gave me my opportunity. "You see, good mother, how it all is, and the risk we run. Do you know, I had half a mind to keep the earring myself for some months and say never a word to you; only I was not sure of pitching on a safe hiding-place. It would be so dreadful a thing for Lucy Bird if it were to get known." "Poor Lucy, poor Lucy!" she said, the tears on her light eyelashes. "Oh, Johnny, if she could only be induced to leave that man!" "But she can't, you know. Robert Ashton has tried over and over again to get her back to the Court--and tried in vain. See how it glitters!" I was holding the earring so that the rays of the sun fell upon it, flashing and sparkling. It seemed more beautiful than it used to be. "I am very, very glad to have it back, Johnny; the other was useless without it. You have not," with a tone of apprehension in her voice, "told Joseph?" I shook my head. The truth was, I had never longed to tell anything so much in my life; for what did I ever conceal from him? It was hard work, I can assure you. The earring burning a hole in my pocket, and I not able to show Tod that it was there! "And now, mother, where will you put it?" She rose to unlock a drawer, took from it a small blue box in the shape of a trunk, and unlocked that. "It is in this that I keep all my little valuables, Johnny. It will be quite safe here. By-and-by we must invent some mode of 'recovering the earring,' as poor Lucy said." Lifting the lid of a little pasteboard box, she showed me the fellow-earring, lying in a nest of cotton. I took it out. "Put them both into your ears for a minute, good mother! Do!" She smiled, hesitated; then took out the plain rings that were in her ears, and put in those of the beautiful pink topaz and diamonds. Going to the glass to look at herself, she saw the Squire and Tod advancing in the distance. It sent us into a panic. Scuffling the earrings out of her ears, she laid them together on the wool in the cardboard box, put the lid on, and folded it round with white paper. "Light one of the candles on my dressing-table, Johnny. We will seal it up for greater security: there's a bit of red sealing-wax in the tray." And I did so at her direction: stamping it with the seal that had been my father's, and which with his watch they had only recently allowed me to take into wearing. "There," she said, "should any one by chance see that packet, though it is not likely, and be curious to know what it contains, I shall say that I cannot satisfy them, as it concerns Johnny Ludlow." "Are you upstairs, Johnny? What in the world are you doing there?"