Part 55

Mag, guess what I saw! No, truly; what I really saw? It made me jump to my feet and grab it with a squeal.

I saw my own purse lying on the gravel almost at my feet, near the little fruit-stand that had tempted me.

Blank empty it was, stripped clean, not a penny left in it, not a paper, not a stamp, not even my key. Just the same I was glad to have it. It linked me in a way to the place. The clever little girl that had stolen it had been here in this park, on this very spot. The thought of that cute young Nance Olden distracted my mind a minute from my worry--and, oh, Maggie darlin', I was worrying so!

I walked up to the fruit-stand with the purse in my hand. The old fellow who kept it looked up with an inviting smile. Lord knows, he needn't have encouraged me to buy if I'd had a penny.

"I want to ask you," I said, "if you remember selling a lot of good things to a little girl who had a purse this--this morning?"

I showed it to him, and he turned it over in his crippled old hands.

"It was full then--or fuller, anyway," I suggested.

"You wouldn't want to get her into trouble--that little girl?" he asked cautiously.

I laughed. "Not I. I--myself--"

I was going to say--well, you can imagine what I was going to say, and that I didn't say it or anything like it.

"Well--there she is, Kitty Wilson, over yonder," he said.

I gasped, it was so unexpected. And I turned to look. There on one of the benches sat Kitty Wilson. If I hadn't been blind as a bat and full of trouble--oh, it thickens your wits, does trouble, and blinds your eyes and muffles your ears!--I'd have suspected something at the mere sight of her. For there sat Kitty Wilson enthroned, a hatless, lank little creature about twelve, and near her, clustered thick as ants around a lump of sugar, was a crowd of children, black and white, boys and girls. For Kitty--that deplorable Kitty--had money to burn; or what was even more effective at her age, she had goodies to give away. Her lap was full of spoils. She had a sample of every good thing the fruit-stand offered. Her cheeks and lips were smeary with candy. Her dress was stained with fruit. The crumbs of cake lingered still on her chin and apron. And Kitty--I love a generous thief--was treating the gang.

It helped itself from her abundant lap; it munched and gobbled and asked for more. It was a riot of a high old time. Even the birds were hopping about as near as they dared, picking up the crumbs, and the squirrels had peanuts to throw to the birds.

And all on Nancy Olden's money!

I laughed till I shook. It was good to laugh. Nancy Olden isn't accustomed to a long dose of the doleful, and it doesn't agree with her. I strolled over to where my guests were banqueting.

You see, Mag, that's where I shouldn't rank with the A.D. I'm too inquisitive. I want to know how the other fellow in the case feels and thinks. It isn't enough for me to see him act.

"Kitty," I said--somehow a twelve-year-old makes you feel more of a grown-up than a twelve-months-old does--"I hope you're having a good--time, Kitty Wilson, but--haven't you lost something?"

She was chewing at the end of a long string of black candy-shoe-strings, all right, the stuff looks like--and she was eating just because she didn't want to stop. Goodness knows, she was full enough. Her jaws stopped, though, suddenly, as she looked from the empty purse in my outstretched hand to me, and took me in.

Oh, I know that pause intimately. It says: "Wait a minute, till I get my breath, and I'll know how much you know and just what lie to tell you."

But she changed her mind when she saw my face. You know, Mag, if there's a thing that's fixed in your memory it's the face of the body you've done up. The respectables have their rogues' gallery, but we, that is, the light-fingered brigade, have got a fools' gallery to correspond to it.

In which of 'em is my picture? Now, Margaret, that's mean. You know my portrait hangs in both.

I looked down on the little beggar that had painted me for the second salon, and lo, in a flash she was on her feet, the lapful of good things tumbled to the ground, and Kitty was off.

I was bitterly disappointed in that girl, Mag! I was altogether mistaken in my diagnosis of her. Hers is only a physical cleverness, a talented dexterity. She had no resource in time of danger but her legs. And legs will not carry a grafter half so far as a good, quick tongue and a steady head.

She halted at a safe distance and glared back at me. Her hostility excited the crowd of children--her push--against me, and the braver ones jeered the things Kitty only looked, while the thrifty ones stooped and gathered up the spoil.

"Tell her I wouldn't harm her," I said to one of her lieutenants.

"She says she won't hurt ye, Kit," the child screamed.

"She dassent," yelled back Kitty, the valiant. "She knows I'd peach on her about the kid."

"Kid! What kid?" I cried, all a-fire.