ffice," flashed through her mind. Few girls were ever
thus punished and it was a fourth grade tradition that a girl bad
enough to need an interview with the principal was always expelled.
Sarah wondered what her brother would say if she came home and said
she was expelled. Rosemary would feel the disgrace keenly--no one in
the Willis family had even been expelled from school, Sarah was
quite sure.

Did you knock, or did you go right in? Was the principal always
there? Perhaps he might be away for the day--Sarah devoutly hoped he
would be. She shut her eyes tightly, took a firmer grip on the
handkerchief containing the dead snake, and knocked on the glass
panel.

"Come in," called a pleasant voice, a woman's voice.

Sarah opened the door and stepped in. She saw a large, sunny room
with a desk in the center, and a smaller desk over by the window
where a young woman was typing busily.

"Mr. Oliver isn't in, is he?" said Sarah speaking at a gallop. A
swift glance had shown her that the young woman was the only person
in the room.

"Just go right into the next office, and you'll find him," said Mr.
Oliver's secretary, smiling.

CHAPTER XVI

MR. OLIVER AND SARAH

The door into the next office stood open. Sarah walked in, that is,
she stepped just inside the doorway and stood there as though glued
to the floor. The thin, gray-haired man who was stooping over the
flat-topped desk, looking at a card file, glanced up at her and
smiled. This was the principal, Mr. Oliver.

"Good morning," he said. "Did you wish to see me?"

"No-o," stammered Sarah, "I didn't. But Miss Ames sent me."

Mr. Oliver sat down and pointed to a chair drawn up beside the desk.

"Suppose you come and sit down and tell me all about it," he
suggested.

His secretary in the next room stepped over and closed the
connecting door noiselessly as Sarah seated herself on the edge of
the chair and stared unhappily at the floor.

"If you're in Miss Ames' room, you are a fourth grader," said Mr.
Oliver pleasantly. "What is your name?"

"Sarah," the small girl whispered, "Sarah Willis."

"Oh, yes--then you're a sister of Doctor Willis," said the
principal. "And I know Rosemary, too. Isn't there another sister--a
little light-haired girl in one of the grades?"

"That's Shirley," answered Sarah, forgetting her errand for an
instant and looking Mr. Oliver in the face for the first time.
"She's in the first grade."

"Well, Sarah, what have