At this critical juncture there was the sound of a scrimmage outside in the passage, and a loud excited voice was heard proclaiming:
“I will go in! I tell you I’ve come to see Miss Raymonde Armitage, and it’s important. Miss Beasley there? All the better! I want to speak to her too. Will you kindly move out and let me pass? Oh, very well then—there!”
The door opened with a forcible jerk, and a stranger entered unceremoniously. She was a damsel of perhaps fifteen, slim, and very pretty, with twinkling brown eyes and curly hair and coral cheeks. She wore an artistic dress of myrtle-green Liberty serge, with a picturesque muslin collar, and had a chain of Venetian beads round her white throat.
The school gazed at her spellbound, almost aghast. 284
“The ghost-girl!” murmured Veronica faintly sinking into a chair.
“Violet!” exclaimed Raymonde in tones of ecstasy.
“Yes, here I am, right enough!” announced the stranger. “Cycled over directly I read your letter. Stars and stripes! You’ve got yourself into a jolly old mess! Hope they haven’t tortured you yet! I suppose they still use the rack and the thumbscrew in this benighted country? Cheero! We’ll pull you through somehow!”
Then, catching the Principal’s amazed and outraged expression, she continued: “Sorry! Are you Miss Beasley? I ought to have introduced myself. I do apologize! My name’s Violet Chalmers, and I’m an American.”
She proclaimed the fact proudly, though her soft r in “American,” and slightly nasal intonation, would have established her nationality anyway.
“May I ask your errand?” said the head mistress rather stiffly.