going to blab. I've
enough self-respect to keep a promise when I've once made it, though, as
I said before, you don't deserve it. You the Warden, too! A nice example
you are to the Lower School, if they only knew it!"

"They mustn't know it. Promise me again, Dorothy; promise me faithfully
you won't tell. I'll bring you a huge box of chocolates if you'll keep
this a secret."

"I don't want your chocolates!" said Dorothy scornfully. "I've told you
already that I don't break my promises. You're safe enough as regards
me."

"Silence!" called the mistress; and the two girls fell into line again
as they marched with their drawing boards down the corridor.

In the dressing-room the rest of the Form had plenty to say about the
occurrence.

"You've done for yourself, Dorothy," declared Ruth Harmon. "You'll be in
Miss Tempest's bad books for evermore."

"I can't see that I was any worse than the others," snapped Dorothy;
"not so bad, indeed, because I wasn't caught, and yet I owned up. Miss
Tempest might have taken that into account."

"She would have, I dare say, if you hadn't answered her back," said
Noelle Kennedy.

"I only told her I didn't know we mightn't go."

"But you said it so cheekily, and Miss Tempest hates cheek above
everything. I shouldn't care to be in your shoes now. What a good thing
you weren't chosen Warden!"

Dorothy tugged at her boot lace till it snapped, then had to tie the two
ends together in a knot. How hard it was to keep her unwelcome secret!
She felt as if in common justice the girls ought to be made aware of the
moral cowardice of their leader.

"I'd have made a better one than some--yourself not excepted," she
growled.

"My lady's in her tantrums to-day," chirped Ruth.

"I'm not! What a hateful set you all are! I wish to goodness you'd leave
me alone!"

Dorothy seized her books and stalked away without a good-bye to anybody.
How thankful she was that Avondale was a day school, and that she could
shake the dust of it from her feet until nine o'clock to-morrow morning!

"If I weren't going home to Aunt Barbara now, I should run away," she
thought. "It would be dreadful to have to endure this all the evening.
Oh dear, I hate the place, and I hate Miss Tempest, and I hate the
girls, and everything, and everybody!"

Poor Dorothy carried a very sore heart back to Holly Cottage that
evening, but she cheered up when she entered the pretty little
sitting-room, with its bright fire an