"Morning brings counsel," says the old proverb.
In this case it seemed true.
Katy, to her surprise, found a train of fresh thoughts filling her mind, which were not there when she fell asleep.
She recalled her passionate words and feelings of the day before.
Now that the mood had passed, they seemed to her worse than the injury which provoked them.
Quick- tempered and generous people often experience this.
It was easier for Katy to forgive Mrs. Florence, because it was needful also that she should forgive herself.
"I said I would write to papa to take us away," she thought
"Why did I say that?
What good would it do?
It wouldn't make anybody disbelieve this hateful story.
They'd only think I wanted to get away because I was found out.
And papa would be so worried and disappointed.
It has cost him a great deal to get us ready and send us here, and he wants us to stay a year.
If we went home now, all the money would be wasted.
And yet how horrid it is going to be after this!
I don't feel as if I could ever bear to see Mrs. Florence again.
I must write.
"But then," her thoughts flowed on, "home wouldn't seem like home if we went away from school in disgrace, and knew that everybody here was believing such things. Suppose, instead, I were to write to papa to come on and make things straight.
He'd find out the truth, and force Mrs. Florence to see it.
It would be very expensive, though; and I know he oughtn't to leave home again so soon.
Oh, dear! How hard it is to know what to do!"
"What would Cousin Helen say?" she continued, going in imagination to the sofa-side of the dear friend who was to her like a second conscience.
She shut her eyes and invented a long talk,—her questions, Cousin Helen's replies.
But, as everybody knows, it is impossible to play croquet by yourself and be strictly impartial to all the four balls.
Katy found that she was making Cousin Helen play (that is, answer) as she herself wished, and not, as something whispered, she would answer were she really there.
"It is just the 'Little Scholar' over again," she said, half aloud,
"I can't see.
I don't know how to act."
She remembered the dream she once had, of a great beautiful Face and a helping hand.
"And it was real," she murmured, "and just as real, and just as near, now as then."
The result of this long meditation was that, when Clover woke up, she found Katy leaning over, ready to kiss her for good morning, and looking bright and determined.
"Clovy," she said, "I've been thinking; and I'm not going to write to papa about this affair at all!"
"Aren't you?
Why not?" asked Clover, puzzled.
"Because it would worry him, and be of no use.
He would come on and take us right away, I'm sure; but Mrs. Florence and all the teachers, and a great many of the girls, would always believe that this horrid, ridiculous story is true.
I can't bear to have them.
Let's stay, instead, and convince them that it isn't.
I think we can."
"I would a great deal rather go home," said Clover.
"It won't ever be nice here again.
We shall have this dark room, and Miss Jane will be more unkind than ever, and the girls will think you wrote that note, and Lilly Page will say hateful things!"
She buttoned her boots with a vindictive air.
"Never mind," said Katy, trying to feel brave.
"I don't suppose it will be pleasant, but I'm pretty sure it's right.
And Rosy and all the girls we really care for know how it is."
"I can't bear it," sighed Clover, with tears in her eyes.
"It is so cruel that they should say such things about you."
"I mean that they shall say something quite different before we go away," replied Katy, stroking her hair.