"Merle Ramsay! Really, you forget yourself," chided Miss Fanny. "Pick those things up and put them back. A more disgracefully untidy performance I never saw. I won't have that litter on the floor. Is your Julius Cæsar there, or is it not?"
Apparently it was not, for Merle turned over her heap of confusion in vain; and in her agitation let the lid of the desk fall with an awful slam that echoed through the room. She sat up scarlet in the face.
"That will do!" said Miss Fanny icily. "You must look on with Mavis if you can't find your own."
"Please, Miss Fanny, I saw a Julius Cæsar in the pound this morning," volunteered Opal demurely. "I don't know whose it is."
The mistress turned to the lost-property basket, stooped down, drew out the missing book, and handed it reproachfully to Merle.
"If you kept your desk in better order you wouldn't lose your things. See how you've delayed the whole form! You must bring a penny for the missionary box this afternoon."
Merle sat through the lesson with a face like thunder. She was absolutely certain that she had left the book inside her desk, and she strongly suspected Opal of having deliberately taken it out and placed it in the pound.
"Just like one of her disgusting tricks. She'd do anything mean. I'll have something to say to her after school," she mused gloomily.
She tackled Opal in the cloakroom when the latter was tying her shoe-laces.
"Look here, you blighter," she began, "what do you mean by cribbing my books and sticking them into the pound? It's the absolute limit."