"Will you explain to the boarders, please! I hate them to think me a sneak."
"I'll make that all right."
"And about those exam questions—Mavis and I wouldn't have dreamt of looking them up beforehand, and I don't suppose we should have known them. Wouldn't it be fairer just to cross them off in our papers and not count them? We'd much rather you did."
"Yes, it's the only thing to be done."
Clive, much subdued, blurted out a kind of apology before he left, which Miss Mitchell accepted with dignity. Perhaps she did not think it good for him to forgive him too easily. His evil prophecies about the exams were fortunately not fulfilled, for his cousins, though they did not score brilliant successes, just managed to scrape through without any failures.
The Fifth form, when they heard the true facts of the story, repented their hasty court of justice and made handsome amends.
"It doesn't matter!" said Merle. "You were quite right if you thought we'd been cheating. I should pull anybody else up myself, fast enough. It must have been the acting we did at Christmas that put the idea into Clive's idiotic young head. He was dressed up as a girl then, and rather fancied himself. He really is the limit."
"We shall always be a little uncertain now which is you and which is your cousin!" laughed Iva.
"Oh, he won't do it again! We've put him on his honour, and I don't think he'd break his word."