-pulled
out her pocket-handkerchief.

"Who has drawn this picture on the blackboard?" continued Miss Pitman.

"Hope--Hope did it! It wasn't any of us!" snivelled Irene, trying to
thrust the brunt of the affair on to her friend's shoulders.

Miss Pitman gave Hope a scathing glance, under which the girl quailed.

"An extremely clever way of showing her talent for drawing, no doubt,"
remarked the mistress sarcastically. "I shall be obliged if someone will
clean the board."

Several officious hands at once clutched the duster and erased the
offending portrait. Miss Pitman walked to her desk, closed the lid,
locked it, and put the key in her pocket.

"It is superfluous to tell you what I think of you," she said. "Miss
Tempest will have to hear about this."

"Well, Hope's done for with Miss Pitman, at any rate," said Bertha
Warren to Addie Parker, when the outraged mistress had taken her
departure, and the four sinners had fled downstairs.

"Yes, there'll be no more favouring now--and a good thing, too! It was
time Miss Pitman's eyes were opened. Will she really tell Miss Tempest?"

"Serve them right if she does. I'm waiting for developments."

There was not long to wait. At two o'clock, Hope, Blanche, Irene, and
Valentine received a summons to the study, and after a ten minutes'
interview with the head mistress came away with red eyes.

"Have you heard the news?" said Noelle Kennedy presently. "There's been
a most tremendous storm--a regular blizzard--in the study. Miss Tempest
has been ultra-tempestuous, and Hope and the others have come out just
wrecks."

"What's the matter?" enquired some of the girls who had not heard of the
occurrence in the classroom.

"Hope found Miss Pitman's desk unlocked, and she and Irene and Val and
Blanche were calmly turning over the contents when Pittie popped into
the room and caught them. Then the squalls began. They had to report
themselves in the study, and it turned out that there was something else
against Hope and Blanche. I don't know who gave them away, but somebody
had been telling Miss Tempest that they were at the wedding that day.
She charged them with it, and was simply furious because they hadn't
owned up when she asked the class."

"I can tell you who told her," volunteered Margaret Parker. "It was
Professor Schenk. He saw them there, and he happened to mention it this
morning."

"Well, Miss Tempest was fearfully stern. She said Hope wasn't fit to be
Warden,