You will be had
up before them. If you still persist in keeping your knowledge to
yourself they will be obliged to strike your name off the school roll.
You will not then be able to get the Ayldice Scholarship. You are a
clever girl, Ruth. My dear child, the whole thing is a mistake. You do
wrong to conceal insurrection. I can tell your special friend Kathleen,
who will no longer be queen of the Wild Irish Girls, to-morrow morning,
that I have forced this confession out of you. She will not hate you;
she will forgive you. She will understand. My dear, why should you
sacrifice everything for the sake of this naughty Irish girl?"

"Because I love her, and because it would be mean," answered Ruth, and
now she burst into tears.

Miss Ravenscroft talked to her a little longer, but Ruth was firm. When
she left the head-mistress's presence she felt a certain sense almost of
elation.

"Now I don't feel so absolutely horrible," she said to herself. "Of
course I will face the governors. I will just say that I know but that I
can't tell. Yes, I believe I have done right. Anyhow, I don't feel quite
so bad as before I went to see Miss Ravenscroft."

Meanwhile Susy Hopkins was having a busy time. She went to school in the
morning, but as soon as ever lesson hours were over she flew back to her
mother's shop. There Mrs. Hopkins awaited her with a tray full of good
things.

"Now, Susy," she said, "Tom will help you, for I have got him to
promise. He will borrow a wheelbarrow, and all the things can be
stacked away tidily into it, and he will take them straight off to Aunt
Church's house with you immediately after dinner. You had best spend the
afternoon with the old lady and encourage her all you can. It is a
blessed relief to have two months of that debt wiped out, and I am very
much obliged to you, child, and I will help you all I can."

"You can't think how exciting it is, mother," said Susy. "And you know
the best of the fun is, they are making no end of a fuss in the school.
They're trying to find out all about poor Kathleen's society, in order
to put a stop to it and to call the foundationers to order; but the only
effect of the fuss is to make more and more of the girls want to join. I
saw Kathleen for a few minutes this morning, and she said that she had
twelve applications for badges already to-day, but she told the new
girls that they had best not come to the meeting to-night, as there
wouldn't be room for them. Kathle