Merle stood up at once with flaming cheeks.
"I put the metronome outside the window for a minute, Miss Fanny, but I didn't leave it there. I put it back upon the piano."
Miss Fanny glared hard, first at Merle, and then with a kind of comprehensive sweeping glance over the whole school.
"Can any other girl volunteer any information?"
There was dead silence. Opal was rather ostentatiously sharpening the point of her pencil. The teacher's gaze came back to a focus on Merle.
"You had no business to interfere with the metronome at all. I certainly consider it your fault that it has been taken. In future I can't have you day girls staying in the schoolroom after four o'clock. You must leave directly you've put your books away. Go to your forms now, girls! We've wasted too much time already."
Merle stumped off, feeling extremely cross. She was absolutely certain that Opal, who had run back last thing into the schoolroom, must have put the metronome outside on the window-sill, knowing that the Nicky Nans would be sure to carry it off. At 'break' she taxed her with it. But Opal simply laughed, and went on eating biscuits.
"Don't set all the work of the Nicky Nans down to me," she declared. "It's a pity they didn't keep the metronome. Miss Fanny will trot down to the pound and pay her sixpence and get it back, and it will be tick-tacking again on the piano as gaily as ever, unless some of those priceless kids have chanced to break it."
"But you put it outside for them?" persisted Merle.
"I? I never do naughty things!"