line would not meet
Verena's anxious gaze. She kept on looking down. Occasionally her lips
moved. There was a red stain on her cheek. Penelope with one of her
sharpest glances perceived this.

"It is caused by fruit," thought the youngest of the schoolroom children.
"I wonder who has given Pauline fruit. Did she climb the garden wall or
get over the gate into the orchard?"

Nobody else noticed this stain. Miss Tredgold came in presently, but she
took no more notice of Pauline than if that young lady did not exist.

The hour of preparation was over. It was now six o'clock. In an hour
Pauline was expected to go to bed. Now, Pauline and Verena had bedrooms
to themselves. These were attic rooms at the top of the house. They had
sloping roofs, and would have been much too hot in summer but for the
presence of a big beech tree, which grew to within a few feet of the
windows. More than once the girls in their emancipated days, as they now
considered them, used to climb down the beech tree from their attic
windows, and on a few occasions had even managed to climb up the same
way. They loved their rooms, having slept in them during the greater part
of their lives.

Pauline, as she now went in the direction of the north walk, thought with
a sense of satisfaction of the bedroom she had to herself.

"It will make things easier," she thought. "They will all be on the lawn
doing their needlework, and Aunt Sophia will be reading to them. I will
go past them quite quietly to my room, and then----"

These thoughts made Pauline comparatively happy. Once or twice she
smiled, and a vindictive, ugly expression visited her small face.

"She little knows," thought the girl. "Oh, she little knows! She thinks
that she is so clever--so terribly clever; but, after all, she has not
the least idea of the right way to treat me. No, she has not the least
idea. And perhaps by-and-by she will be sorry for what she has done."

Seven o'clock was heard to strike in the house. Pauline, retracing her
steps, went slowly past her sisters and Miss Tredgold. Miss Tredgold
slightly raised her voice as the culprit appeared. She read aloud with
more determination than ever. Penelope flung down the duster she was
hemming and watched Pauline.

"I a'most wish I wor her," thought the ex-nursery child. "Anything is
better than this horrid sewing. How it pricks my fingers! That reminds
me; I wonder where Aunt Sophy's thimble has got to. I did look hard for
it.