Beth’s gaze flashed to the neck of Mrs. Severn’s gown. The old-fashioned pin she usually wore was missing.
“Oh! that is awful!” the girl murmured.
“No, it is not,” Miss Hammersly said sternly. “It is merely unjust—and actionable. I have come here to tell you, Mrs. Severn, that you must write Miss Baldwin an apology, stating that you have no evidence that she had anything to do with the disappearance of your pin. This disavowal I will read to my girls. And I will send home any one of them who dares repeat the calumny upon Miss Baldwin’s character.”
Mrs. Severn, very angry, tried to be dignified, while the parrot went into a spasm of laughter in the corner of the bay window. But Miss Hammersly had been managing people—and getting her own way with them, too—for twenty years. She and Beth finally left the house with just the paper the school principal had demanded.
On Monday morning after prayers, Miss Hammersly gave the entire school a lecture on the evils of gossip and read Mrs. Severn’s written acknowledgment of the wrong she had done Beth. Maude Grimshaw was very much subdued just at this time. If the story of the lost pin and the accusation against Beth was repeated, it was done so in secret, thereafter.
The wound, however, remained open in Beth’s soul. It was hard for even such a sweet nature as hers to overlook and forgive the treatment she had received at the hands of many of her schoolmates.
CHAPTER XXVI
ROUNDING OUT ANOTHER YEAR
It may have been well for Beth Baldwin’s advancement in her studies and for her financial prosperity, that the foregoing incidents had taken place. It shut the young girl more within herself and left her mind freer for study and work.
Those girls who were sorry and ashamed because of countenancing a mean act, even to a slight degree, tried at first to shower favors upon the occupant of Number Eighty, South Wing; at least, they all brought her work for her needle. But Beth knew her friends now—there was no question of that. They were few, and they were loyal, but they took up very little of Beth’s time.
As the term progressed she secured other and better paying occupation for her free hours, and outside of school. But she heard nothing more from Mrs. Ricardo Severn nor of the lost sunburst.