A Dangerous Friend by Emma Leslie

AT breakfast time the next morning Tom's uncle took the shilling again from his purse, and turned it about in his hand. "I hope you haven't got yourself mixed up with any young thief, Master Tom? " he said. "I saw one of your people yesterday, and he told me you were getting on very well, and if this lad who has been away on account of his health is not able to come back, you would stand a very good chance of getting into the office altogether, and that would be a good lift for you."

"Yes, uncle," said Tom, in rather an absent tone, for he was wishing he had never seen Jack, or had kept clear of having anything to do with him.

He went to work feeling desperately miserable again, and wishing he had never come to London, but had been content to be a blacksmith like his father. But this last wish did not last long. Oh, he could not live in the country all his life, he was quite sure, he said to himself.

The fuss his uncle had been making over the shilling being marked need not frighten him. He had not stolen it. And even if anyone found out that he had got it, they were not to know how it was Jack had to pay him this money, unless he told, and he made up his mind he would not do that.

He also decided that he would not go to meet Jack that evening, but stay at home and write a letter to his mother and Dick to send with the gloves.

On his way back he stopped to look into a shop window at the Christmas cards displayed in tempting profusion, for he thought he might buy one for his mother, without telling his uncle anything about it; for if he knew he had more money than the eighteenpence he had paid for the gloves, he might ask a good many inconvenient questions about the matter.

It was some time, however, before he could make up his mind which one to select, and at last when the choice was made, and he went into the shop to buy it, he found to his dismay that he had got no money to pay for it.

While the man was wrapping up the card, Tom was turning out his pockets. There was a ball of string, sundry ends of blacklead-pencil, his empty purse, but the pocket-handkerchief in which the whole of his wealth was tied up in one corner was not to be found.

"What is it? " asked the man, after waiting for a minute or two, while Tom searched through another pocket.

"I have lost my money," gasped Tom.

The man came round the counter to look on the floor, thinking he had just dropped it. And Tom himself gazed round the shop in the hope of seeing the familiar red handkerchief, for it seemed impossible that it could have vanished since dinner time.

He tried to recollect whether he had taken it out since he had counted over his treasure during the dinner hour, but he could not remember doing so. He did not go out for a walk to-day, for fear Randall and the rest of them should set upon him again to treat them to hot drinks and cakes, for Tom had no notion of spending this money on anyone but himself. He had enjoyed his visit to the music-hall, and meant to go again with Jack, when this fuss about the marked shilling had blown over a little.

He had thought of all this as he counted the money over at dinner time, and to think that the whole of it had vanished, and with it all chance of going to see the splendours of the place again was very hard.

"Was it sixpence or a shilling that you dropped? " asked the man, as he searched among the toys and walking-sticks that stood about on the floor.

"I had it all tied up in my handkerchief," replied Tom.

"Tied in a handkerchief," repeated the man; "then you can't have lost it here, you must have dropped it before you came into the shop, or else somebody took it out of your pocket for you."

But Tom shook his head to this suggestion. If he had walked home with Bob Ronan, he would have thought this had been done, for Bob might do it for a joke just to frighten him, but Bob had left him while he was putting on his overcoat, and he had not seen him since.

But it was clear the pocket-handkerchief and all it contained was beyond his reach now, and it was of no use waiting to look for it here.

"You can take the card and pay me for it when you go past in the morning," said the shopkeeper as Tom was leaving.

Tom hesitated, but at last, thinking that he should have his week's threepence the next day, and that his mother would expect him to send her some remembrance of Christmas, he decided to take the card, saying as he did so, "I may not be able to pay you until to-morrow evening, but I suppose that will do?"