"Seeing is believing," maintained Merle.
"Do you mean to accuse me—the head girl—of cheating! I wish you'd go and tell Miss Pollard or Miss Fanny. They know me too well to listen to a word you'd say. Why, I'm their own god-daughter!"
"Unfortunately that doesn't make you immaculate."
"Though it ought to, when they trust you so," added Mavis.
Discussing the matter between themselves, the Ramsays decided that in this very point lay all the trouble. The Misses Pollard, in their foolish fondness for Opal, were making a grave mistake. They deliberately shut their eyes where she was concerned, and were always biased in her favour.
"It's such an amateur little school," sighed Merle. "I don't mean the lessons, because those are really rather good, but the discipline is horribly slack."
"Hardly exists," agreed Mavis. "Miss Fanny says easily, 'Now, get along, girls!', and a few try to work and the rest don't, and she never makes them. I hate a slack teacher, however clever she is."
"Everything is so casual," groused Merle. "There's no proper order even in answering questions. Opal raps out the answers if she knows them, and gets all the credit. It's most unfair. I should like to send Miss Fanny for a term to Whinburn High, and let her see how things are managed at other schools. It would be an eye-opener for her."
"And for Opal too, if she could go as well. It would just do her all the good in the world."
Evidently the only thing to be done was to keep a careful eye upon the delinquent, and bring her to book at the first opportunity that offered sufficient private evidence without taking the affair to the teacher's notice.