AN INTERESTING JEWEL STORY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2546, 3 November 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

AN INTERESTING JEWEL STORY.

The following good story, though rather a long one, is told about a hunt after an actress's diamonds. A young lady had been travelling with her mother, a prominent actress, and when the tour took in some unimportant one-night towns the lady took out her diamond earrings and handed them to her daughter for safe keeping. At onco the young lady thought the safest place for the diamonds was to sew them in a little caso and stitch them upon her corsets. This she did, and the tour approached completion. One day, some weeks after the diamonds were housed', Mamma asked Miss if she kept the watch wound, and Miss's mind reverted to a little transaction that took place about ten days before. In some manufacturing town the girl had said she needed new corsets, and in a walk Miss had discovered a very pretty pair and bought them. In the dressing room of a provincial theatre she had put oil the new pair and thrown the old ones —diamonds and all—behind a curtain. This had happened ten days before.

She consulted the advance manager and they were off by train the same night, her mother knowing nothing about the loss. Another troupe had been at the provincial theatre, and the doorkeeper who had swept over the place had died a few days before. They sought out the wi<fWv and found the relict putting the fatherless children tu bed, and groaning over the devastation worked when poor Miss and her escort eutered. " Had she swept the dressing rooms the day succeeding the first and only appearance of the emotional star ?" " She had" "Found a pair of corsets?'' "Yes. No good. Front steels broke." "But there was something in a washleather case stitched in the top. Where was that?" "Well," said the woman " I never noticed nothing ; thought it was where they was mended and the bones was sticking out. She'd throw'd 'em away." Miss fell on a chair, while the business manager catechised the woman. The waste and rubbish of the theatre, he found, was thrown in a field '• where they was filling in."

To the diamond fields, by the light of a rising moon, went the whole party augmented by a small boy, who had risen and tucked his nightgown into a pair of baggy knicker-bockcrs. A candle was bought at the grocery, and, by the mingled aid of the solar system and a tallow dip, the work began. A cartload of shells and the lath and plaster of a cottage had been thrown last, but underneath a flaring handbill of the 10-days-old performance was dug up. Led by that, our treasure seekers worked on. " Here's them things, ma," said the young Obadiah as he dragged up the old stays by the lacing. Miss sat down on a stone while the manager whipped out a knife, and ma held up the caudle. A surgical operation, and the sparkling atones, safe and sound were discovered. The procession formed. Obadiah got paid for his night-gowned services, and Miss and Ma's earrings took a return train. At breakfast next morning she gave up the jewellery, remarking, "It was too much bother and responsibility to take good care of valuables."