question, speaking, for all her
agitation, quickly and fluently as was her habit, though not very
coherently. "Yes, ma'am, I know. Everybody was saying this morning
that the Fingals' mother was a negro, and so the girls weren't going
to invite Camilla to the picnic, and it made Judith mad."

"Why, _she_ didn't know Camilla very well, did she?" asked the
teacher, astonished.

"No, ma'am," said Sylvia, still speaking quickly, although the tears
of fright were beginning to stand in her eyes. "It just made her mad
because the girls weren't going to invite her because she didn't think
it was anyhow her fault."

"_Whose_ fault!" cried the teacher, completely lost.

"Camilla's," quavered Sylvia, the tears beginning to fall.

There was a pause. "_Well_--I _never_!" exclaimed the teacher, whose
parents had come from New England. She was entirely at a loss to know
how to treat this unprecedented situation, and like other potentates
with a long habit of arbitrary authority, she covered her perplexity
with a smart show of decision. "You children go right straight home,
along out of the building this minute," she commanded. "You know
you're not allowed to loiter around after school-hours. Sylvia and
Judith, stay here. _I'm going to take you up to the Principal's
office_."

The girls and Jimmy Weaver ran clattering down the stairs, in an
agreeably breathless state of excitement. In their opinion the
awfulness of the situation had been adequately recognized by the
teacher and signaled by the equally awful expedient of a visit to
the Principal's office, the last resort in the case of the rarely
occurring insubordinate boy.

Because Miss Miller had not the least idea what to say in an event so
far out of the usual routine, she talked a great deal during the trip
through the empty halls and staircases up to the Principal's office
on the top floor; chiefly to the effect that as many years as she had
taught, never had she encountered such a bad little girl as Judith.
Judith received this in stony silence, but Sylvia's tears fell fast.
All the years of her docile school existence had trained her in the
habit of horror at insubordination above every other crime. She felt
as disgraced as though Judith had been caught stealing,--perhaps more
so.

Miss Miller knocked at the door; the Principal, stooping and
hollow-chested, opened it and stood confronting with tired, kind eyes
the trio before him--the severe woman, with her pathetic,