So that's how it stood when Jimmy lighted off his pony, and two minutes
later he was holding the amber heart under his sweetheart's astonished
eyes.
"Good morning, James," she said. "You'm early."
"What's this?" he asked, wasting no words in politeness.
She was a play-actor to the roots of her being, Cora was, and she started
and stared.
"Not another, my dear man, surely?" she asked.
"No," he answered. "Not another. But what I'd like to know is, where be
yours?"
"In your hand, thank God," she answered, and put out her fingers to take
it; but he wasn't giving it back to her no more.
He commanded her to tell him how it come about that his gift to her--a
sacred heirloom evermore--come to be on his sister's neck that morning,
and she marvelled at a tale so strange and wondered what the world was
coming to.
"I'll tell you the truth," she said--suspicious words in Jimmy's ear,
because, to market or elsewhere, he'd often noted that when a fellow
creature begins a tale like that, truth be often the one thing lacking.
But Cora's story sounded as if there weren't much wrong, and perhaps
another sort of man might have believed her.
"I broke my word and I own it," she told him. "I was so proud of the
necklace that I couldn't but wear it, James, for I wanted the holiday
people to see it round my neck, and the other girls to see it too.
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