Looking at these things loftily, and with a strong determination not to think twice of what any one might say who did not understand the subject, Mary was forced at last to the stern conclusion that she must keep her promise. Not only because it was a promise--although that went a very long way with her--but also because there seemed no other chance of performing a positive duty. Simple honesty demanded that she should restore to the owner a valuable, and beyond all doubt important, piece of property. Two hours had she spent in looking for it, and deprived her dear father of his breakfast shrimps; and was all this trouble to be thrown away, and herself, perhaps, accused of theft, because her mother was so short and sharp in wanting to know everything, and to turn it her own way? The trinket, which she had found at last, seemed to be a very uncommon and precious piece of jewelry; it was made of pure gold, minutely chased and threaded with curious workmanship, in form like a melon, and bearing what seemed to be characters of some foreign language: there might be a spell, or even witchcraft, in it, and the sooner it was out of her keeping the better. Nevertheless she took very good care of it, wrapping it in lamb's-wool, and peeping at it many times a day, to be sure that it was safe, until it made her think of the owner so much, and the many wonders she had heard about him, that she grew quite angry with herself and it, and locked it away, and then looked at it again. As luck would have it, on the very day when Mary was to stroll down Bempton Lane (not to meet any one, of course, but simply for the merest chance of what might happen), her father had business at Driffield corn market, which would keep him from home nearly all the day. When his daughter heard of it she was much cast down; for she hoped that he might have been looking about on the northern part of the farm, as he generally was in the afternoon; and although he could not see Bempton Lane at all, perhaps, without some newly acquired power of seeing round sharp corners, still it would have been a comfort and a strong resource for conscience to have felt that he was not so very far away. And this feeling of want made his daughter resolve to have some one at any rate near her. If Jack had only been at home, she need have sought no further, for he would have entered into all her thoughts about it, and obeyed her orders beautifully. But Willie was quite different, and hated any trouble, being spoiled so by his mother and the maidens all around them.