?" he prompted.

"Well, the next day after the play the Easter vacation began, you know,
and Flora _forged_ a letter from her father, giving her permission to
spend the ten-days' Easter holiday with one of the girls who lived in
Atlanta," Miss Earle continued, with great relish. "Well, sir, right in
the middle of the holidays, here came her father and mother--they were
both alive then--and asked for Flora! They wired the girl in Atlanta,
and Flora wasn't there, and the Hacketts were nearly crazy. But as luck
would have it, Mr. Hackett ran into a friend of theirs on Broadway, and
this friend began to tease Mr. Hackett about his daughter's being a
chorus girl!"

"A chorus girl!" Dundee echoed, taking care not to show his
disappointment.

"Of course they nabbed her right out of the show, but that wasn't the
worst of it!" Miss Earle went on dramatically and mysteriously. "They
tried to hush it up, of course, but the word went through the school
like wildfire that Flora wasn't only in the chorus, but that she was
_living with an actor_ she'd been writing fan letters to long before the
Easter play went on!"

"Did you hear his name?" Dundee asked.

"No," Miss Earle acknowledged regretfully. "But I'll bet anything it was
the truth!... Why, Flora Hackett was so man-crazy she flirted
scandalously with every male teacher in the school. The golf 'pro' we
had then got so scared of her he quit his job!"

"I suppose," Dundee prompted craftily, "she wasn't any worse than some
of the other Hamilton girls."

"We-ell," Miss Earle admitted reluctantly, "nothing ever _came out_ on
any of the others, but it looked mighty funny to me when Janet Raymond's
mother took her out of school right in the middle of a term and hauled
her off to Europe _for a whole year_!... I guess,"--she suggested, with
raised eyebrows, "you know what it _usually_ means when a girl has to
spend a whole year abroad, and her mother says she's taking her away for
her health--and Janet looking as healthy as any other girl in the
school, except that she was crying half the time, and smuggling special
delivery letters in and out by one of the maids--"

"Did you tell Nita these stories and point out the pictures of the
girls?" Dundee had to risk asking.

Miss Earle froze instantly. "Naturally she was interested in the school,
and once when she said it always made her mad the way chorus girls were
run down, I told her that in my opinion society girls were worse tha