Bob departed murmuring,

"'What find I here?
Fair Portia's counterfeit?'"

in tones so amorous that Belden House Annie, who was sweeping on the
stairs, dropped her dust-pan with a clatter, declaring that she was
"jist overcome, that she was!"

"Which was the only compliment my acting of Bassanio ever got," Bob told
her sadly afterward.

Betty was still hot with indignation over Bob's disclosures when Roberta
Lewis knocked on the door. Roberta was wrapped up in a fuzzy red
bath-robe, a brown sweater and a pink crepe shawl, and she looked the
picture of shivering dejection.

"What in the world is the matter?" demanded Betty, emptying her history
notebooks out of the easy-chair and tucking Roberta in with a green and
yellow afghan, which completed the variegated color scheme to
perfection.

"Please don't bother about me," said Roberta forlornly. "I'm going back
in a minute. I've lost my wedding-pin--Miss Hale's wedding-pin--well,
you know what I mean,--and caught a perfectly dreadful cold."

"You don't think that your pin was stolen?" asked Betty quickly. There
had been no robberies in the college since Christmas, and the girls were
beginning to hope that the mysterious thief had been discouraged by
their greater care in locking up their valuables, and had gone off in
search of more lucrative territory.

"Yes, I do think so," said Roberta. "I almost know it. You see I hadn't
been wearing my pin. I only took it out to show Polly Eastman, because
she hadn't happened to see one. Then K. came and we went off to walk. I
left the pin right on my dressing-table and now it's gone. But the
queerest part is that Georgia Ames was in my room almost all the time,
because hers was being swept, and before that she was in Lucy Mann's,
with the door wide open into the hall, and my door open right opposite.
And yet she never saw or heard anything. Isn't it strange?"

"She was probably busy talking and didn't notice," said Betty. "People
are everlastingly tramping through the halls, until you don't think
anything about it. Have you looked on the floor and in all your drawers?
It's probably tumbled down somewhere and got caught in a crack under the
dressing-table or the rug."

"No, I've looked in all those places," said Roberta with finality. "You
know I haven't as many things to look through as you."

"Please don't be sarcastic," laughed Betty, for Roberta's belongings
were all as trim and tailor-made as herself. "How d