Raymonde started, and faced the Principal with flaming eyes.

“I didn’t! I didn’t!” she protested.

“Then where is it?”

“That I don’t know.”

“Perhaps you will explain,” continued Miss Beasley, watching her searchingly, “how it is that you were seen at Marlowe post office on Friday afternoon, and that you bought a postal order for twelve and sixpence. Oh, Raymonde, you may well blush! Mrs. West was calling only an hour ago, and told me that she had seen you in the shop. She asked if I knew about it, or if you had been there without leave. Why did you get a postal order?”

Raymonde was silent for a moment. Then:

“To send for a fountain pen,” she stammered.

“You admit that you visited the post office? Now, I know that you had finished all your pocket-money. You drew the last of your allowance from me on the day of your concert.”

“I had a pound-note of my own, put away in my handkerchief case. My uncle gave it to me last holidays.” 276

“If that is so, then where is the money for which you were treasurer?”

“I don’t know.”

“Raymonde, I can’t believe such a story. You’re not telling me the truth!”

“Indeed, indeed I am!” burst out Raymonde. “Oh! what shall I do? I can’t explain, and I can’t say any more. If you’d only wait a few days!”

“Indeed I shall not wait,” returned the headmistress coldly. “The matter must be investigated at once.”

Miss Beasley, greatly upset by such a happening in her school, consulted her brother as to her best course to pursue. On learning the circumstances he took a very grave view of the case.

“There’s little doubt of the girl’s guilt,” he declared. “She evidently yielded to a sudden temptation. She wanted a fountain pen in time for the examinations, and she borrowed the notes which had been left in her charge, in order to send for it. Probably she wrote home for more money, and expected to be able to replace it, and that is the explanation of her asking for a few days’ grace. It seems to me as clear as daylight, and I should deal with her as she deserves.”

“May I ask one question?” said Miss Gibbs, who also had been called to the conclave. “How is it that Mrs. West affirms that she saw Raymonde in the post office at six o’clock on Friday, while Veronica and Hermie declare that at five minutes to six she was sitting at the piano in the practising-room? It is not possible to reach the village in five minutes.”

Miss Beasley started. This aspect of the matter had not occurred to her. 277

“It’s very perplexing!” she murmured.

“Raymonde has been troublesome,” continued Miss Gibbs, “but I have always found her scrupulously straight and truthful. Such a lapse as this seems to me utterly foreign to her character.”

“You never know what a girl will do till she’s tried!” commented the Rev. T. W. Beasley. “Better expel her at once, as a warning to the others.”

“Give her a chance!” pleaded Miss Gibbs. “The evidence is really so unsatisfactory. Wait a day or two, and see if we can sift it!”

“I wish I knew what is best!” vacillated the Principal. “It is so near the end of the term that it seems a pity to send Raymonde home till next week, when she would be going in any case. I will call at the post office, and make enquiries as to the exact time she came there last Friday. I think I won’t decide anything before Saturday.”

Miss Beasley stuck to this determination, in spite of her brother’s protests against over-leniency and lack of discipline. She excused herself on the ground that she did not wish to disturb the examinations, which were to continue until Friday evening. Meanwhile Raymonde was in the position of a remanded prisoner at the bar. She was not allowed to mingle with the rest of the school. She was conducted, under Mademoiselle’s escort, to her place in the examination hall, but spent the remainder of her time in the practising-room, which served as a temporary jail. Her meals were sent up to her, and no girl was allowed, under penalty of expulsion, to attempt to communicate with her. She was not permitted to go to the dormitory at 278 night, but slept on a chair-bed in Miss Beasley’s dressing-room.

Naturally the episode was the talk of the school. Its interest eclipsed even the horror of the examinations. It seemed a mystery which no one could disentangle. The girls remembered only too well that Raymonde had been very secretive about how she had obtained the fountain pen; but, on the other hand, witnesses declared that they had seen her both at the post office and in the practising-room, when she certainly could not have been in two places at once.

The Fifth decided that the Reverend T. W. Beasley must be at the bottom of it. There had never been any disturbances before he came to the school, and since his arrival everything had been unpleasant, therefore he must be distinctly responsible for Raymonde’s misfortunes; which was hardly a reasonable conclusion, however loyal it might be to their friend. The Mystics talked the matter over in private, and suggested many bold but quite impracticable schemes, such as subscribing the missing money amongst them, or throwing up a rope-ladder to the sanctum window for Raymonde to escape by, neither of which plans would have cleared her character.

Raymonde herself preserved an extraordinary attitude of obstinacy. She utterly refused to give any more explanations. She did not cry, but there was a grey misery in her face that was worse than tears. She walked in and out of the examination hall with her head proudly erect. Her comrades, with surreptitious sympathy, glanced up as she passed, but under the lynx eye of their examiner 279 were unable to convey to her the notes which several of them at least had prepared ready to pass under the desk.

On Friday afternoon Raymonde was sitting alone in the practising-room, when the door was unlocked and Veronica entered with a tray.

“I’ve come to bring your tea,” explained the monitress. “I don’t really know whether I’m supposed to be allowed to talk to you, but Miss Beasley didn’t tell me not to, so I shall. Look here, Ray, why don’t you end this wretched business?”

“I only wish I could!” groaned Raymonde.

“But you can. There’s something behind it all, I’m sure. Take my advice, and explain it to Miss Beasley. She’d be quite decent about it.”

Raymonde shook her head sadly and silently.

“Yes, she would, if you’d only confess. I can’t understand you, Ray. You were always a madcap, but you never did anything underhand or sneaky before; even when you were naughtiest you were quite square and above-board.”

“Thank you!” smiled Raymonde faintly.

“I can’t think why you should have changed, and conceal everything! Ray, I appeal to your best side. You signed our Marlowe Grange League, and seemed quite enthusiastic about it at the time. Won’t you try to live up to it now?”

Raymonde rose to her feet. In her eyes were two smouldering fires.

“You can’t understand!” Her voice was trembling with passion. “It’s exactly because I signed that paper and promised to be faithful to my friends and to speak the truth, that I’m in all this trouble. No, I tell you I won’t explain! If you 280 think so badly of me that you won’t believe my word, it’s no use my speaking to you. Oh! I hate everybody, and I hate everything! I wish I could go home!”

“Better stay and clear things up!” said Veronica. “If I could do anything for you, I would.”

“Would you?” asked Raymonde with a flash of hope. “Could you possibly get a letter posted for me?”

Veronica shook her head.

“I daren’t!” she said briefly. “Miss Beasley trusted me to bring up your tea, and I mustn’t forget I’m a monitress. I shall have to tell her that I’ve been speaking to you. I ought to go now. Good-bye!”

Raymonde drank her tea, but left the bread and butter untouched. She was not hungry, and her head ached. The whole of her gay, careless world seemed to have crumbled to ashes. She wondered what her chums were thinking of her. Did they, like Veronica, mistrust her conduct? She knew that her behaviour was extraordinary. A sense of utter desolation swept over her, and, pushing aside the tea things, she leaned her arms on the table, with her hot face pressed against them.

From this despairing attitude she was aroused by Miss Gibbs, who five minutes later came to fetch the tray.

“Don’t give way, Raymonde!” said the mistress, laying quite a kindly hand on the girl’s shoulder. “There’s to be proper enquiry into this matter to-morrow, and I, for one, trust you’ll be able to clear yourself. Keep your self-control, and be prepared to answer any questions that are put to you then. Remember there’s nothing like courage and speaking the truth.”

Raymonde raised herself slowly, hesitated for a moment, then fumbled in her pocket.

“Miss Gibbs,” she faltered, “I’d love to tell you everything, but I can’t. I wonder if you’d trust me enough to send off this letter without opening it, or asking me what I’ve written in it?”

The mistress took the envelope and examined it. It was addressed to Miss V. Chalmers, Haversedge Manor, near Byfield. She looked into Raymonde’s eyes as if she would read her very soul. Her pupil bore the scrutiny without flinching.

“It is a most unwarrantable thing to ask, but I will do it,” replied Miss Gibbs. “I hope my confidence in you will be justified.”

At 9.30 on the following morning a trap arrived at the Grange to convey the Reverend T. W. Beasley and his Gladstone bag to the railway station. A row of heads peeping from behind the curtains in the upper windows watched him depart, and exhibited manifestations of intense satisfaction.

“There! He’s actually gone!”

“Only hope he won’t miss his train and come back!”

“No, no! He’s in heaps of time, thank goodness!”

“Glad he isn’t staying the week-end!”

“He’s got to preach somewhere in aid of something on Sunday.”

“May he never come here again, that’s all!”

Perhaps in secret Miss Beasley was equally relieved. She had passed a strenuous week, and had possibly arrived at the conclusion that she was, on the whole, capable of arranging her own school to 282 the satisfaction of herself and the parents of her pupils. She considered that she understood girls better than a bachelor university don, however great his literary attainments, could do. The experiment had not been altogether a success, and need not be repeated. She sighed as she waved a last good-bye and turned into the house.

An urgent matter, which she had put off until her brother’s departure, must now claim her attention. She ordered the entire Fifth Form, together with Hermie and Veronica, to repair to the practising-room, where Raymonde was still kept prisoner.

The girls marched in as quietly as if they were going to church. Their Principal sat by the table, with two little parallel lines of worry on her usually smooth forehead, and a grieved look in her grey eyes.

“It is very distressing to me to be obliged to make this enquiry,” she began, “but it is absolutely necessary that we find out what has become of those missing notes. I put you all on your honour to tell me what you know. Can any girl throw any light on the matter?”

She looked anxiously and wistfully round the little circle, but nobody replied. Raymonde sat with downcast eyes, and the old obstinate expression on her face. The eyes of all the other girls were focused upon her.

“I am most loath to accuse anyone of such a dreadful thing as taking money,” continued Miss Beasley, “but unless you can offer me some explanation, Raymonde, I shall be obliged to send you home. The facts look very black against you. You were treasurer, and cannot produce the funds; 283 you were seen buying a postal order, and you received a handsome fountain pen by post.”

“If you please, Miss Beasley,” interposed Veronica, “how could Raymonde be buying a postal order when Hermie and I saw her practising here?”

“It is most puzzling, I allow; but both Mrs. Sims the postmistress, and Mrs. West, who happened to be buying groceries in the shop, agree emphatically that it was Raymonde who came to the counter. They say that she was not in school uniform, but wore a green dress and a small cap.”

“Raymonde has no green dress!”

“But she has admitted to me that she bought the postal order.”

The girls looked at their chum in consternation. Raymonde buried her face in her hands.

At this critical juncture there was the sound of a scrimmage outside in the passage, and a loud excited voice was heard proclaiming:

“I will go in! I tell you I’ve come to see Miss Raymonde Armitage, and it’s important. Miss Beasley there? All the better! I want to speak to her too. Will you kindly move out and let me pass? Oh, very well then—there!”

The door opened with a forcible jerk, and a stranger entered unceremoniously. She was a damsel of perhaps fifteen, slim, and very pretty, with twinkling brown eyes and curly hair and coral cheeks. She wore an artistic dress of myrtle-green Liberty serge, with a picturesque muslin collar, and had a chain of Venetian beads round her white throat.

The school gazed at her spellbound, almost aghast. 284

“The ghost-girl!” murmured Veronica faintly sinking into a chair.

“Violet!” exclaimed Raymonde in tones of ecstasy.

“Yes, here I am, right enough!” announced the stranger. “Cycled over directly I read your letter. Stars and stripes! You’ve got yourself into a jolly old mess! Hope they haven’t tortured you yet! I suppose they still use the rack and the thumbscrew in this benighted country? Cheero! We’ll pull you through somehow!”

Then, catching the Principal’s amazed and outraged expression, she continued: “Sorry! Are you Miss Beasley? I ought to have introduced myself. I do apologize! My name’s Violet Chalmers, and I’m an American.”

She proclaimed the fact proudly, though her soft r in “American,” and slightly nasal intonation, would have established her nationality anyway.

“May I ask your errand?” said the head mistress rather stiffly.

“Certainly. I’ve come to help Raymonde out of a scrape. I never dreamed she’d be landed in such a queer business as this. I say, Ray, will you explain, or shall I do the talking?”

“You, please!” entreated Raymonde.

“Well, as I’ve just said, I’m an American. We crossed the herring-pond just before the war started, and we’ve been stuck in this old country ever since. Before you all came to the Grange we rented the place for a year, and a time we had of it, too, with rats and bats, and burst pipes, and no central heating or electric light! Mother went almost crazy! Well, last Easter, when I was staying at the seaside, 285 I met Raymonde, and we chummed no end. She told me that her school was moving in here, and I bet her a big box of Broad Street pop-corns I’d turn up some time in the house and astonish the girls. I only bargained that she wasn’t to let any of them know beforehand of my existence. Well, I guess I kept my word. I joined in a game of hide-and-seek one dark afternoon, and I reckon I passed off as a first-class ghost. Didn’t I chuckle, just! You wonder how I got in without anybody seeing me? Why, I’d discovered the secret passage that leads, from a sliding panel in the attic, right under the moat into a cave inside the wood.”

“Joyce Ferrers’ passage!” exclaimed the girls.

“The very same. I rode over on my bicycle—we’re staying only eight miles away—left it inside the cave, lighted my lamp, and strolled up to the attic as easily as you please. There was the whole school tearing around like mad, so I scuttled round too, and scared you just some! It was so prime, I guessed I’d try it on again. That was yesterday week. I’d luck enough to catch Raymonde, and she was a sport that day too. We changed clothes, and I came downstairs here and did her practising for her, while she explored the secret passage and did a little shopping on her own account in the village.”

“Then it was you, and not Raymonde, whom we saw sitting at the piano!” exclaimed Veronica.

Violet nodded.

“Exactly so! I guessed I was going to be found out, and daren’t turn my head when you spoke.”

“Did you see the notes put into the drawer?” enquired Miss Beasley. 286

“No, but I saw them afterwards, lying just on the top of some other papers. I locked the drawer before I left the room, and put the bunch of keys inside the pocket of Raymonde’s dress, which I had on. I meant to tell her about it, but I forgot. She was in such a hurry when she came back, and said she’d be late for prep., so we each scrambled into our own clothes, and she tore off downstairs, and I went home.”

“This, unfortunately, does not bring us any nearer to the solution of the puzzle—what has become of the notes?” said Miss Beasley.

“Raymonde couldn’t have spent them in the village, when she had gone out before they were put there!” ventured Veronica.

“And I certainly didn’t abscond with them!” declared Violet. “Though I really believe Ray thinks so. Confess you do, old sport!”

Raymonde blushed crimson.

“I thought you’d taken them for a joke,” she said in a low voice.

“Is that why you refused to explain?” interposed the Principal quickly. “You were afraid of getting your friend into trouble?”

“Yes, Miss Beasley.”

“But what’s become of the wretched notes?” asked Violet; “They must be somewhere. Have you looked properly through this old bureau? I know these queer shallow drawers by experience, and things sometimes slip over the backs of them. Have you had the drawer right out? It’s stuck, has it? Oh, it probably only wants a good pull! Lend me your key! Here goes!”

Violet exerted all her strength in a mighty tug, 287 and the drawer tumbled out with a jerk. She put in her hand and felt about in the space behind. There was a large hole in the back of the bureau, and her fingers went through it into a cavity in the wall.

“There’s something queer here!” she exclaimed, drawing out a round ball of shreds of paper. “Mrs. Mouse’s nursery, if I don’t mistake! Sorry to intrude, but we’ll take a peep at the children!”

Very gingerly she pulled aside the torn pieces of paper, and disclosed to view four little atoms not much bigger than bluebottles.

“Baby mice!” squealed the girls.

“Shame to disturb them, but I’ve got to examine their cradle. Ah! what d’you make of this, now? If it isn’t a piece of a ten-shilling note, I’ll—I’ll swallow the babies!”

“You are most undoubtedly right!” declared Miss Beasley, picking up the shreds of paper and trying to piece them together. “The mouse must have taken them out of the drawer to help to build her nest.”

“Rather an expensive nursery!” chuckled Violet. “Well, I guess we’ve proved who’s the thief, anyway!”

“I am extremely obliged to you,” said Miss Beasley. “But for you, the matter might always have remained a mystery.”

“And please forgive me for interfering. It was cheek, I know, to turn up in the attic, but I couldn’t resist the secret passage. I think this old place must be ripping as a school. I want to come next term. We’d intended to go home to New York in September, but Dad heard this morning he’d have 288 to stay here another couple of years on business, so he said he guessed I’d best settle down and learn to be a Britisher. Would you have me here?”

“That depends on whether your father wishes to send you to me or not.”

“Oh! Dad’ll let me do anything I like, so it’s as good as settled. I’ll arrive with my boxes in September. Look here, it’s cheek again, but will you please not scold Raymonde for all this affair? It was mostly my fault.”

“Raymonde had no business to change places with you, and go to the village without leave,” said Miss Beasley, eyeing her pupil reprovingly. “But I think she has been punished enough. She may take you downstairs now, and ask Cook to give you some cake and a glass of milk before you cycle home again.”

“Thanks ever so! I came without my breakfast. I’m real hungry now. I’ll talk Dad over, and get him to write to you about my coming to school here. I’m dead nuts on it. Good-bye!”

“Well,” murmured Veronica to Hermie, as Violet, with a final squeeze of the Principal’s hand, made her smiling exit; “well, all I can say is that if this American girl comes next September there’ll be lively doings! Raymonde’s bad enough—but to have two madcaps in the school! I’m thankful I’m leaving!”

“I pity the monitresses!” agreed Hermie.