e had seen you run through the gate and down the road
towards Aberglyn. I asked you if this were so, and you all three
denied it. Knowing that Elsie is not always very truthful I believed
your word in preference to hers. This afternoon I happened to meet
Miss Newman, a lady who lives near Valley Lane, and she told me that
she noticed some of my girls coming out of Mrs. Price's shop yesterday
at about ten minutes to five, and hurrying back towards Heathercliffe.
I am more pained than I can tell you, not only to think that you
should have broken the rules, but that you should have stooped to
utter such deliberate falsehoods. You allowed me to accuse Elsie of
the very fault you were committing yourselves, and meanly left her to
bear the blame. I am thoroughly ashamed of you, and hope you are
equally ashamed of yourselves. Go at once to your bedrooms. Your tea
will be sent to you later. I feel that, until you have fully realized
what you have done, you are not fit to mingle with the rest of the
class. You will, of course, take no part in our fifth-of-November
party to-morrow."

Poor Linda! She left the room feeling as if her trouble were almost
greater than she could bear. It was impossible now to explain that she
had only gone as far as the gate. Miss Kaye would probably not believe
her, and in any case would think that she was trying to shirk her part
of the blame, and cast it on Hazel and Nina. She was beginning to
experience the truth of the old proverb that you cannot touch pitch
and keep your hands clean; she had never intended to do anything in
the least dishonourable, but having taken a first step it had been
very difficult to act in such a sudden emergency. Friendship had
seemed to demand that she should not betray her companions, though
their conduct certainly did not justify any great consideration on
their behalf.

"If I'd only never left the house," she thought, "or if I had told
Miss Kaye I had gone into the garden! But then she would have known
the others must have been there too. Oh, it's all a horrid puzzle, and
I'm simply miserable! I shan't see Guy Fawkes to-morrow, and I hate
everybody and everything, and I wish I were at home."

She went to bed in tears, which increased when Miss Coleman brought
her her tea, and, after collecting Sylvia's nightclothes, informed her
that her roommate, together with Connie Camden and Jessie Ellis, were
to sleep in a large bedroom generally called "The Hospital", and no