Comfort Pease and her Gold Ring | Page 8

was safe. She dared not even feel of her pocket under her dress. Whenever she thought of it Miss Tabitha seemed to be looking straight at her. Poor Comfort had a feeling that Miss Tabitha could see her very thoughts.
The Stebbinses and Sarah Allen usually stayed at noon, but that day they all went home. Sarah Allen had company and the Stebbinses had a chicken dinner. So Comfort stayed alone. The other scholars lived near enough to the school-house to go home every day unless it was very stormy weather.
After everybody was gone, Miss Tabitha and all, the first thing Comfort did was to slide her hand down over the bottom of her pocket, and carefully feel of it under her dress skirt.
Her heart gave a great leap and seemed to stand still--she could not feel any ring there.
Comfort felt again and again, with trembling fingers. She could not believe that the ring was gone, but she certainly could not feel it. She was quite pale, and shook as if she had a chill. She was too frightened to cry. Had she lost Aunt Comfort's ring--the real gold ring she had given her for her name? She looked at the pin which Miss Tabitha had quilted into the top of her pocket, but she dared not take it out. Suppose Miss Tabitha should ask if she had, and she had to tell her and be whipped? That would be almost worse than losing the ring.
Comfort had never been whipped in her life, and her blood ran cold at the thought of it.
She kept feeling wildly of the pocket. There was a little roll of writing-paper in it--some leaves of an old account-book which her mother had given her to write on. All the hope she had was that the ring had slipped inside that, and that was the reason why she could not feel it. She longed so to take out that pin and make sure, but she had to wait for that until she got home at night.
Comfort began to search all over the school-room floor, but all she found were wads of paper and apple-cores, slate-pencil stumps and pins. Then she went out in the yard and looked carefully, then she went down the road to the old Loomis place, where she and Matilda had walked at recess--Miss Tabitha Hanks went home that way--but no sign of the ring could she find. The road was as smooth as a white floor, too, for the snow was old and well trodden.
Comfort Pease went back to the school-house and opened her dinner-pail. She looked miserably at the pancakes, the bread and butter, and the apple-pie and cheese, and tried to eat, but she could not. She put the cover on the pail, leaned her head on the desk in front, and sat quite still until the scholars began to return. Then she lifted her head, got out her spelling-book, and tried to study. Miss Tabitha came back early, so nobody dared tease her; and the cold was so bitter and the sky so overcast that they were not obliged to go out at recess. Comfort studied and recited, and never a smile came on her pale, sober little face. Matilda whispered to know if she were sick, but Comfort only shook her head.
Sometimes Comfort saw Miss Tabitha watching her with an odd expression, and she wondered forlornly what it meant. She did not dream of going to Miss Tabitha with her trouble. She felt quite sure she would get no sympathy in that quarter.
All the solace Comfort had was that one little forlorn hope that the ring might be in that roll of paper, and she should find it when she got home.
It seemed to her that school never would be done. She thought wildly of asking Miss Tabitha if she could not go home because she had the toothache. Indeed, her tooth did begin to ache, and her head too; but she waited, and sped home like a rabbit when she was let out at last. She did not wait even to say a word to Matilda. Comfort, when she got home, went right through the sitting-room and upstairs to her own chamber.
"Where are you going, Comfort?" her mother called after her.
"What ails the child?" said Grandmother Atkins.
"I'm coming right back," Comfort panted as she fled.
The minute she was in her own cold little chamber she took the pin from her pocket, drew forth the roll of paper, and smoothed it out. The ring was not there. Then she turned the pocket and examined it. There was a little rip in the seam.
"Comfort, Comfort!" called her mother from the foot of the stairs. "You'll get your death of cold up there," chimed in her grandmother from the room beyond.
"I'm