"What have you been doing?"
"Something awful!"
"Go ahead and confess, then!"
They were sitting in the garden at Windy Howe, resting after planting some rows of peas, and sheltering under a tree from the heavy drops of a sudden April shower. Claudia pulled off her gardening gloves, and rested a delicately-modelled chin upon a prettily-shaped hand. There was desperate trouble in her blue eyes.
"I'm scared to go back to school, and that's the fact! I've done an awful thing! The day we broke up, Miss Janet gave me some papers to be signed and sent in to the Kindergarten College. She said they must be posted before the 6th. I put them in my coat pocket. Well—I've only just remembered them."
Lorraine was aghast.
"Claudia! Your application for the exam! How could you forget?"
"I don't know, but I did!" groaned the sinner.
"When did you remember?"
"Only this morning. I hadn't worn my coat during the holidays, it was too hot. I put it on this morning to run to the town to shop for Violet, and stuck my hand in my pocket, and found that wretched envelope."