arde?" she asked.

"I'm not crying," answered Ermengarde, in a muffled, unsteady voice.

"You are," said Jessie. "A great big tear just rolled down the bridge
of your nose and dropped off at the end of it. And there goes another."

"Well," said Ermengarde, "I'm miserable--and no one need interfere."
And she turned her plump back and took out her handkerchief and boldly
hid her face in it.

That night, when Sara went to her attic, she was later than usual. She
had been kept at work until after the hour at which the pupils went to
bed, and after that she had gone to her lessons in the lonely
schoolroom. When she reached the top of the stairs, she was surprised
to see a glimmer of light coming from under the attic door.

"Nobody goes there but myself," she thought quickly, "but someone has
lighted a candle."

Someone had, indeed, lighted a candle, and it was not burning in the
kitchen candlestick she was expected to use, but in one of those
belonging to the pupils' bedrooms. The someone was sitting upon the
battered footstool, and was dressed in her nightgown and wrapped up in
a red shawl. It was Ermengarde.

"Ermengarde!" cried Sara. She was so startled that she was almost
frightened. "You will get into trouble."

Ermengarde stumbled up from her footstool. She shuffled across the
attic in her bedroom slippers, which were too large for her. Her eyes
and nose were pink with crying.

"I know I shall--if I'm found out." she said. "But I don't care--I
don't care a bit. Oh, Sara, please tell me. What is the matter? Why
don't you like me any more?"

Something in her voice made the familiar lump rise in Sara's throat. It
was so affectionate and simple--so like the old Ermengarde who had
asked her to be "best friends." It sounded as if she had not meant
what she had seemed to mean during these past weeks.

"I do like you," Sara answered. "I thought--you see, everything is
different now. I thought you--were different."

Ermengarde opened her wet eyes wide.

"Why, it was you who were different!" she cried. "You didn't want to
talk to me. I didn't know what to do. It was you who were different
after I came back."

Sara thought a moment. She saw she had made a mistake.

"I AM different," she explained, "though not in the way you think. Miss
Minchin does not want me to talk to the girls. Most of them don't want
to talk to me. I thought--perhaps--you didn't. So I tried to keep out
of your way."