The Green Satin Gown | Page 8

is possible that they may be paste. The imitations are sometimes very perfect; no one but a jeweller can tell positively. I will take it to Boston with me to-morrow, and have it examined."
He dropped the brooch into a drawer at his side, turned the key and put it in his pocket, all in his quiet, methodical way, as if he were in the habit of examining diamond brooches every day; then he nodded kindly to the pair, and bent over his papers again.
Mary went out silently, and Gregory followed her with a dazed look on his strong features. He looked back at the door two or three times, but said nothing till they were back in the finishing-room.
Then--"It's one of his days!" he said. "I've knowed him ever since his mustash growed, and there's days when he's struck with a dumb sperit, just like Scriptur'. Don't you fret, Mary! He'll see you righted, or I'll give you my head."
Mary might have thought that Mr. Gregory's head would be of little use to her without the rest of him. She felt sadly dashed and disappointed. She hardly knew what she had expected, but it was something very different from this calm, every-day reception, this total disregard of her own and her companion's excitement.
"I guess he thinks they're nothing great!" she said, wearily. "What was that he said about paste, Mr. Gregory? You never saw any paste like that, did you?
"No!" said Gregory, "I've heered of Di'mond Glue, but 'twan't nothin' like stones--nor glass neither. You may run me through the calenders if I know what he's drivin' at. But I'll trust him!" he added, vehemently. "I done right to tell you to go to him. He's in one of his moods to-day, but you'll hear from him, if there's anything to hear, now mark my words! And now I'd go home, if I was you, and see your ma'am, and get your dinner. And--Mary--I dono as I'd say anything about this, if I was you. Things get round so in a mill, ye know."
Mary nodded assurance, and went home, trying to feel that nothing of 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.
"I know his kind!" he said, with a sneer; "and they're no good to your kind, Mary Denison, nor to mine. Mark my words, you'll hear no more of that breastpin."
Mary turned away so decidedly that he said no more, but his eyes followed her with a sinister look.
Next moment he was greeting Lena Laxen cordially, and she was dimpling and smiling all over at his compliments. Lena thought Mr. Hitchcock "just elegant!" and believed that Mary was jealous when she said she did not like him. Something now prompted her to tell him about the silk waist in the forbidden sack; he took her view at once and zealously. The boss (for he did not use the kindly title of "Old Man," by which the other mill-hands designated Mr. Gordon, though he was barely forty) had his eye on the things, most likely, as he had on the pin Mary Denison found. Hadn't Lena heard about that? Well, it was a burning shame, he could tell her; he would see that she, Lena, wasn't fooled that way. And Lena, listening eagerly, heard a story very different from that which