'Well,' said Emily, twisting her slim hands nervously, 'if I must tell, I went back to the schoolroom before dinner for my pencil-box, and,' with a sidelong look at Peggy, 'I noticed Margaret Vaughan putting a book inside Mary Hill's desk.'
The bolt had fallen. Miss Martin turned to Peggy, who, with white and quivering lips, sat as still as if she had been frozen on to the form.
'Is this false or true, Margaret Vaughan?' she asked, in a voice that was scarcely more than a whisper.
There were nearly four hundred girls in the room, but you could have heard a pin drop in the silence. Lilian had risen half up in her place, and was looking at Peggy with eager, expectant face. As for Peggy, she felt as if the end of the world had come. She could not in truth deny the fact, though of the intention she was absolutely guiltless. She had never in her life told a lie, and she summoned all the Vaughan spirit to her aid.
'It's true,' she faltered, trying to speak bravely, but wishing all the time that she could sink through the floor.
Miss Martin gazed at her for a moment as if dumbfounded.
'That will do,' she said at last. 'I will inquire into this privately. Miss Pope, will you kindly take Margaret Vaughan into the kindergarten classroom, where she will wait until I come to her? Each form may now leave the room in turn. We have wasted too much time already.'
Peggy's head was in a whirl. She had a confused idea that Lilian was trying to come to her across a row of benches, and was being held back by a teacher; but otherwise she scarcely knew what was happening, except that she seemed to be the centre for all the eight hundred eyes in the room, till Miss Pope took her by the shoulder and marched her away like a warder escorting a very small convict to gaol. The kindergarten babies did not return to school in the afternoon, so their little classroom was empty. Left alone, the poor child flung herself on to one of the low seats and burst into a passion of tears.
That it should come to this—that she, Peggy Vaughan, who, whatever might be her faults, had always held such an unstained reputation for honour and truthfulness, should be deemed capable of such a mean and discreditable action seemed too hard to be borne. She felt as if she could never explain the matter properly, and that the brand of this horrible affair would remain on her for the rest of her life, bringing disgrace upon the whole family for her sake. She worked herself up nearly to the point of heartbreak when she thought of what Father and Aunt Helen would think about it, and it seemed to her as though the very Crusaders and the lady and gentleman in the Elizabethan ruffs would look at her from their tombs in the church next Sunday with grave disapproval in their eyes.
'It's all my own fault, too,' she thought, 'for Nora wanted to take that wretched book back at once, and she would have done so if it hadn't been for me. I don't think Miss Martin will ever believe me now, when I tell her how it was, and all the girls will think me a mean sneak for evermore.' And her tears flowed down faster and faster as she pictured herself a sort of social outcast in the school, shunned and avoided by everyone. 'I wonder how long they're going to leave me here?' she thought dismally, as the afternoon wore away and the clock chimed half-past three. 'Miss Martin said she was coming after me at once. Oh, if only I could get home, I'd ask Father not to send me to school again. Perhaps Aunt Helen would teach me lessons at home if I begged hard. I can never bear to face anybody here after all this.'