“Have you been out without permission at this hour, Nancy?” asked the Madame.
“Bring the coat and cap. At once!” commanded the Madame, and led the way into her own suite of offices.
Like three prisoners bound for the stake, the three girls followed. Even Corinne felt that she had done wrong in allowing this squabble to continue in the public hall.
The other girls did not even dare whisper at first after the Madame and the three girls were behind the closed door of the Madame’s anteroom. It was seldom that the principal of Pinewood Hall took the punishment, or interrogation, of offenders into her own hands. When she did it was a solemn moment for all concerned.
And the girls gathered at the bottom of the West Side stairway felt this solemnity. They whispered together fearfully until suddenly Jennie Bruce burst in from outdoors.
“Hullo, girls! what’s gone wrong?” she demanded, swinging a small bag in her hand.
“You may well say ‘What’s gone wrong?’” declared Judy Craig, Belle Macdonald’s chum. “The Madame caught poor Cora in an awful stew——”
“Huh!” grunted Jennie. “Only Cora? Well! she can stand it, I guess.”
“Well, I don’t know but she’s right,” wheezed Belle, who was also of the party. “They ought not to let such girls into a school like Pinewood Hall.”