LOST PROPERTY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

LOST PROPERTY.

Geraldine was very proud of her locket. Girls don't wear lockets now as they once • did, but when Geraldine's father kissed her good-bye, and went off to a job in an unhealthy part of South America for two years, mother, to console her, had given her a tiny snapshot of him with Bumble, the puppy, on his .shoulder. This just fitted, into a tiny silver • heart and could be worn on a thin chain round her neck. "So you see Lgo everywhere with you, daddy," Geraldine wrote out to him in her nest letter; "and you go everywhere with me!" But one day Geraldine had to be bridesmaid to her cousin Jill, and the bridegroom presented the bridesmaids with gold bead necklaces. Geraldine consulted her mofher before starting for the wedding. She was. to stay a night with her aunt in town. " "I can't wear the locket and the necklace, too, can I, jnuinsic ?" "No. I think you had better leave, daddy and Bumble behind." "But I told daddy he went everywhere with me." "Then put the locket in your little suitcase, foolish one!" , "Yes, of course, I could do that," agreed Geraldine. < | Geraldine had a new blue suitcase and inside it was a silk pocket. There | the precious locket rested. Geraldine, proud in her new finery under a big coat, leaned out of the railway carriage window eagerly when she j arrived in London. Here her aunt met i lier. Somehow or other, in tho excitement of it all, the blue suitcase was loft 011 the rack. Looking round at the last . minute before entering the taxi which was to drive them straight to the church, Geraldine saw another blue suitcase lying on the platform exactly like her own, for many people have new blue suitcases. She caught it up and thought no more about it till, when the wedding was over and the laughing guests gone, she found the suitcase standing in the spare bedroom of her aunt's house. She was surprised to find nannie, the old nurse of tho house, frowning over its contents, Inside, instead of Geraldine's nightdress, her brush and comb, her bunny dressing-gown and rabbit shoes, and daddy's face in the silver locket, was a big drawing book and a case of coloured chalks. And on the label was written, in a round schoolgirl hand, Miss Molly Pooley, the Art School. Before Geraldine could stop herself she had peeped inside the book and had seen the most splendid drawing of a puppy head which was so like Bumble that she almost cried out: "Oh, Bumbly dear!" What a clever girl was this Miss Molly Pooley! Then her aunt's head came round the corner. "Oh, auntie, I've lost my suitcase with daddy's locket in. What shall I do ? Whatever shall I do?" If this was not a true 6tory there is no doubt that everything would- have come all right. What really happened was that it was made clear to Geraldine that it is not a sensible thing to leave one's suitcase on a luggage rack, especially if you have anything you care for very much inside. Geraldine knows that, "for she never found hers again! But when they' took back the wrong suitcase to the station there was Molly Pooley herself looking anxiously for it; and, lo and behold; she was only two years older than Geraldine, and wore the same school badge! She had left only a little while before Geraldine came. The two became friends at once, and Molly offered to do a picture of Bumble, a tiny picture that could be slipped into a letter for Daddy, and reach him under the hot suns of Nicaragua/ She drew another picture, even tinier, from a photograph of daddy, for Geraldine to carry in her puree. So things were not quite so bad as they might be. And a new friend is as 'good as a locket any day.