bottle to Aunt Selina's back, and it had been too hot. Just then
something hit against the door with a soft thud, fell to the
floor and burst, for a trickle of hot water came over the sill.

"She won't let me hold her hand," Betty wailed, "or bathe her
brow, or smooth her pillow. She thinks of nothing but her stomach
or her back! And when I try to make her bed look decent, she
spits at me like a cat. Everything I do is wrong. She spilled the
foot bath into her shoes, and blamed me for it."

It took the united efforts of all of us--except Bella, who stood
back and smiled nastily--to get Betty back into the sick room
again. I was supremely thankful by that time that I had not drawn
the nurse's slip. With dinner ordered in from one of the clubs,
and the omelet ten hours behind me, my position did not seem so
unbearable. But a new development was coming.

While Betty was fussing with Aunt Selina, Max led a search of the
house. He said the necklace and the bracelet must be hidden
somewhere, and that no crevice was too small to neglect.

We made a formal search all together, except Betty and Aunt
Selina, and we found a lot of things in different places that Jim
said had been missing since the year one. But no jewels--nothing
even suggesting a jewel was found. We had explored the entire
house, every cupboard, every chest, even the insides of the
couches and the pockets of Jim's clothes--which he resented
bitterly--and found nothing, and I must say the situation was
growing rather strained. Some one had taken the jewels; they
hadn't walked away.