But now it was time to go, as Nathalie did not want to weary Mrs. Carney, although, to the girl’s surprise, that lady insisted that her sick headache had disappeared, cured, she laughingly confessed, by the young visitors, who had entertained her so charmingly. With the promise to call again with her charges, Nathalie hurried them away, happily content that she had followed her mother’s suggestion and tried to be helpful and kind to her seemingly odd little neighbor. “It pays to be pleasant with people,” she remarked sagely, as she related the results of the visit. “For even if you don’t like them it gives you a pleasant feeling to think that you have done ‘your bit’ in keeping the chain of brotherly love well oiled.” Mrs. Page sat knitting on the veranda the following morning when Nathalie came hurrying out of the house with an angry light in her eyes. “Oh, mother, what do you think?” she exclaimed irritably. “Cynthia has set the children all looking for that _mystery thing_. Did you ever hear of anything so absurd? And they have gone wild about it, and are running around the attic and the upper floors, pulling things about in a most disorderly fashion. Oh, I do think she is the limit!” Mrs. Page looked at Nathalie in silence for a moment, and then said, with some amusement in her eyes, “It is absurd, but don’t get wrought up about it. Cynthia hasn’t stopped to think. She is so anxious to find it that it has become an obsession with her. But it won’t do to let the children get mixed up in anything of that kind.” Her face sobered, and for a space the only sound was the clicking of her knitting-needles, while Nathalie, with a frown on her face, pondered how she was going to undo the mischief that Cynthia had wrought, keenly realizing what would follow if the children were not stopped in looking for something that she knew they would never find. “Go and tell the children to come here, Nathalie,” said her mother, “and we’ll have a little talk.” The girl, with a brighter face, complied, as she always felt greatly relieved, when anything went wrong with her boys, to have her mother straighten things out. In a moment they were on the veranda, looking very much bedraggled and dust-begrimed, as, with faces eagerly alert, they told what they had been doing, after a little adroit questioning on the part of Mrs. Page. It did not take the good lady long to make it clear to the mystery-seekers that this _valuable thing_ that they had been searching for was something that only concerned Nathalie and her cousins. She now made it clear to them that the searching was undoubtedly a whim on the part of the former inmate of Seven Pillars, and that the finding of it simply meant a reward to the one of the three girls who had proved the most industrious in looking for it. She ended by saying that it would not likely be of any great value, adding, “And, children, it would not be yours even if you found it.”