importance had happened. Do what she would, however, the golden
visions would come dancing before her eyes. Suppose--suppose the
stones should be real, after all! and suppose Mr. Gordon should give
her a part, at least, of the money they might bring in Boston. It
might--she knew diamonds were valuable--it might be thirty or forty
dollars. Oh! how rich she would be! The rent could be paid some time
in advance, and her mother could have the new shawl she needed so
badly: or would a cloak be better? cloaks were more in fashion, but
Mother said a good shawl was always good style.

Turning the corner by her mother's house, she met one of the clerks
who had been in the office when she went in there. He looked at her
with the smile she always disliked, she hardly knew why.

"You did the wrong thing that time, Miss Denison!" he said.

"What do you mean, Mr. Hitchcock?" asked Mary.

"You'll never see your diamonds again, nor the money for them!"
replied the man. "That's easy guessing. He'll come back and tell you
they're glass or paste, and that's the last you'll hear of them. And
the diamonds--for they are diamonds, right enough--will go into his
pocket, or on to his wife's neck. I know what's what! I wasn't born
down in these parts."

"You don't know Mr. Gordon!" said Mary, warmly. "That isn't the way
he is thought of by those who do know him."

The clerk was a newcomer from another State, and was not liked by
the mill-workers.