"But I shall write him, and he will take us away immediately," cried Katy, stung to the quick by this obstinate injustice.
"I will not stay, neither shall Clover, where our word is disbelieved, and we are treated like this.
Papa knows!
Papa will never doubt us a moment when we tell him that this isn't true."
With these passionate words she left the room.
I do not think that either Mrs. Florence or Mrs. Nipson felt very comfortable after she was gone.
That was a dreadful afternoon. The girls had no heart to arrange No. 1, or do any thing toward making it comfortable, but lay on the bed in the midst of their belongings, crying, and receiving visits of condolence from their friends.
The S. S. U. C. meeting was put off.
Katy was in no humor to act as president, or Clover to read her funny poem.
Rose and Mary Silver sat by, kissing them at intervals, and declaring that it was a shame, while the other members dropped in one by one to re-echo the same sentiments.
"If it had been anybody else!" said Alice Gibbons; "but Katy of all persons!
It is too much!"
"So I told Mrs. Florence," sobbed Rose Red.
"Oh, why was I born so bad?
If I'd always been good, and a model to the rest of you, perhaps she'd have believed me instead of scolding harder than ever."
The idea of Rose as a "model" made Clover smile in the midst of her dolefulness.
"It's an outrageous thing," said Ellen Gray, "if Mrs. Florence only knew it, you two have done more to keep the rest of us steady than any girls in school."
"So they have," blubbered Rose, whose pretty face was quite swollen with crying.
"I've been getting better and better every day since they came."
She put her arms round Clover as she spoke, and sobbed harder than ever.
It was in the midst of this excitement that Miss Jane saw fit to come in and "inspect the room."
When she saw the crying girls and the general confusion of every thing, she was very angry.
"I shall mark you both for disorder," she said.
"Get off the bed, Miss Carr.
Hang your dresses up at once, Clover, and put your shoes in the shoe-bag.
I never saw any thing so disgraceful.
All these things must be in order when I return, fifteen minutes from now, or I shall report you to Mrs. Florence."
"It's of no consequence what you do.
We are not going to stay," muttered Katy.
But soon she was ashamed of having said this.
Her anger was melting, and grief taking its place.
"Oh, papa! papa!
Elsie!
Elsie!" she whispered to herself, as she slowly hung up the dresses; and, unseen by the girls, she hid her face in the folds of Clover's gray alpaca, and shed some hot tears.
Till then she had been too angry to cry.
This softer mood followed her all through the evening. Clover and Rose sat by, talking over the affair and keeping their wrath warm with discussion.
Katy said hardly a word. She felt too weary and depressed to speak.
"Who could have written the note?" asked Clover again and again.
It was impossible to guess.
It seemed absurd to suspect any of the older girls; but then, as Rose suggested, the absurdity as well as the signature might have been imitated to avoid detection.
"I know one thing" remarked Rose, "and that is that I should like to kill Mrs. Searles.
Horrid old thing!—peeping and prying into pockets.
She has no business to be alive at all."
Rose's ferocious speeches always sounded specially comical when taken in connection with her pink cheeks and her dimples.
"Shall you write to papa to-night, Katy?" asked Clover.
Katy shook her head.
She was too heavy-hearted to talk.
Big tears rolled down unseen and fell upon the pillow.
After Rose was gone, and the candle out, she cried herself to sleep.
Waking early in the dim dawn, she lay and thought it over, Clover slumbering soundly beside her meanwhile.