“We didn’t intend anything terrible, Dit; honest we didn’t. We just wanted to slip out to see if it could be done.”
“Don’t look so woebegone, Mimi. Your guilty conscience is torturing you. Dr. Barnes may want something entirely different. I shouldn’t mention the summons to anyone if I were you until I found out what it was. In case it is a punishment, don’t worry. Don’t cry. Just look out the window and watch the green grass grow.”
“Watch the green grass grow.” So that’s what the college girls meant. Mimi had heard the expression a dozen times.
“After all Dr. Barnes won’t put you in stocks or tickle your feet or cut off your ears. Let him fume until he gets tired and then he’ll let you go.”
Bolstered by Dit’s encouragement, at one o’clock, Mimi knocked timidly on the door of Dr. Barnes’ private office. He had not come back from lunch so his secretary asked Mimi to wait. Mimi wanted to ask her why she was summoned, but her tongue stuck tightly to the roof of her mouth each time she tried to speak. Mimi teetered on the edge of the chair. She couldn’t be still yet. She never touched the chair back. With great effort she tore her mind from prospective punishment. She tried to think of rainbows or balloons, but there was no beauty for her now. For the first time, thinking “Hojoni” failed.
While she sat here, Chloe, with special permission to miss English and gym, was being photographed for the beauty section of the Annual. While many envied, no one questioned her place. She really was the most beautiful Prep. Already Sue had had her picture taken with both the orchestra and the glee club. Betsy’s would be with the soccer, as well as the basket ball, team. Oh dear! Mimi’s woes were increasing with every thought. Why had she broken her nose when she knew she could have been on the basket ball team? There was still tennis, but the tournament was three weeks off and the pictures for the Annual were being made now!
“Thank you for coming promptly, Miss Mimi,” Dr. Barnes said as he entered briskly and hung his hat on the stand in the corner behind his desk. “I have three things to speak to you about and I do not want you to be late for your one-thirty class.”
Three things! Mimi swallowed hard. She hadn’t been that naughty!
“First,” Dr. Barnes was saying, “you will be glad to know that I recently had a most interesting letter from your father. He asked me to tell you that I was sending him a copy of our complete record of Clorissa. Being a close friend of Chloe’s Aunt Marcia, I was able to send him much information not on our records. All of this is strictly without precedent and must not be mentioned outside this office. Do not tell even Clorissa.”
Dear Dr. Barnes. He was helping, too. Why had she been so afraid? If he were a close friend of Aunt Marcia’s, then she could not possibly, by any stretch of imagination be Freida; that was out.