f her, and considered that there was much room for improvement before
she became a worthy member of St. Chad's. The monitress had no sympathy
with lawlessness, and preferred girls who upheld the school rules,
instead of breaking them. Undue exuberance of spirits during a first
term was in her eyes presumption, and not to be countenanced by a
monitress who did her duty.

She need not have been afraid, however, that the black sheep of her
flock was going to indulge in any more lapses from the strict path of
convention. Honor had returned in a very subdued frame of mind, and
gave no further occasion for reproof.

She took the girls' apologies for sending her to Coventry in excellent
part.

"If you really believed I'd stolen the sovereign, you were quite
right," she remarked briefly. "Anyone who'd done such a thing would
have richly deserved that, and worse. I care quite as much as you all
for the honour of the house."

To Janie alone, the one friend who had taken her part and stood up for
her when the whole school was against her, could Honor turn with a
sense of absolute confidence; the bond between them seemed closer than
ever, and she felt she owed a debt of gratitude that it would be
difficult to repay. Janie's joy at this happy ending to what had
appeared a scholastic earthquake was extreme; and, though she gave
Lettice the credit that was due, she could not help experiencing a
little satisfaction at her own share in elucidating the mystery. She
had worked hard to clear her friend's name, so it was delightful to
reap her reward.

The sensation caused by the events of the last few days was soon
forgotten by the majority of the girls in the excitement of the
examinations. For the next week the whole College lived in a whirl of
perpetual effort to marshal scattered facts, or recall forgotten
vocabularies. The classrooms, given over to pens, ink, and sheets of
foolscap paper, were the abodes of a silence only disturbed by the
occasional scratching of a pen, or the sigh of a candidate in the
throes of attacking a stiff problem. To Honor the experience was all
new. She tried her best, but found it difficult to curtail her
statements sufficiently to allow of her answering every question, in
spite of Miss Farrar's oft-repeated warning against devoting too much
time to one part of the paper. She was, of course, at a great
disadvantage, as she had spent only one term at Chessington, and the
examinations were on the work