"I wouldn't stay. I'd run away and manage to get home somehow. By the by, don't tell anybody else about this. Miss Thompson told me to keep it dark."
"Right you are! We won't blab."
All five girls were busy packing. Their beds were strewn with blouses, stockings, and other impedimenta. In the midst of the proceedings entered Miss Hopkins, rather flustered and overdone with the responsibility of seeing that thirty-six boarders took their essential possessions home with them.
"Dear me, you're very slow in this dormitory!" she observed. "The Violet Room have finished and gone downstairs. If there were less talking you'd get on a good deal quicker. Here are your reports," dealing out from a packet in her hand five envelopes, addressed respectively to Mrs. Watson, E. A. Ridley, Esq., Mrs. Talbot, Colonel Duncan, and the Rev. F. Carnforth. "Now, make haste! I shall expect to find your boxes strapped when I come up again."
Miss Hopkins departed to do her duty in other dormitories, leaving a sensation as of east wind behind her. Avelyn stood staring at the envelope. She was anxious to see her report for this term. The Watson family were lax as regarded letters; at home they usually passed round their correspondence as common property. She tore open the envelope, therefore, and read the report. It was quite a good one, and ended: "Has done conscientious work, and shows marked improvement."
Avelyn purred with satisfaction.
"Tommiekins is a dear! Mother will be ever so pleased. Even Hopscotch has given me 'satisfactory', which is more than I expected from her, and Mr. Harrison has put 'painstaking' for music, though I know he thinks I'm rather a duffer at it."
"I wonder what they've said about me?" speculated Laura, fumbling in her box for the envelope which she had just packed.
"And me?" echoed Janet.
There is force in example. In another moment Laura, Janet, Irma, and Ethelberga were all perusing their reports.