The question was addressed to one of the older girls who came out of the front door just then, without a wrap around her. It was a frosty morning, and every one else had either a jacket or cloak.
"Wait till I run back and get my golf cape," she cried. "I didn't know it was so cold."
"Now look out," whispered Allison to Lloyd. "They're going to say something to her to try to set her against us. They're stopping everybody who comes out. That makes eight already they've set to whispering and looking at us, all standing there in that crowd on the steps."
Nell came out again, hugging her golf cape around her, and stood on the top step. "Well, what's your conundrum?" she asked, good-naturedly.
Caddie slightly raised her voice. "What's the difference between a person who wouldn't stoop to 'anything so common as a kissing-game,' and a person who would get up a goody-goody club, pretending it was for the benefit of the poor, and yet all the time be using it simply as an excuse to meet and read silly novels on the sly, and talk about the boys, and roast the other girls behind their backs, whom they considered 'too common' to associate with them?"
In a flash Lloyd realized what had offended Caddie, and what was the cause of her covert sneers. Whoever it was who had played the sneak had taken pains to report every word she had said about the girls who had played Pillow at Carter Brown's party. She looked around to see who had been the most active in denouncing the club. There they were on the steps, Flynn Willis, Caddie Bailey, Lollie Briggs, all but Mittie Dupong. The same girls she had called common, because they had allowed the boys to take a liberty which she thought cheapened them. She knew now why they were so spiteful in their remarks. Before Nell could gather her wits together for a reply, Lloyd sprang forward, her eyes flashing.
"Why don't you come straight out and say what you mean, Cad Bailey?" she cried. "You're only telling part of the truth. Now I'll tell it all. I did say behind your backs that I thought it was common to play kissing-games, and now I say it to yoah faces. I can't help thinking it. I've been brought up that way, and if you've been brought up differently, then you've a right to think yoah way. If I've hurt yoah feelings, I beg yoah pahdon, but I have a right to express my opinion in my own room to my best friends. We were not 'roasting' anybody. We only made a criticism that you must expect to have made on you, whenevah you do things that are common. And what are you going to say about the person who hid and listened all aftahnoon? Somebody was sneak enough not only to hide in a closet and betray secrets that no girl of honah would have listened to, but she misrepresented the club in repeating them."
Lloyd's temper was rapidly getting the best of her, but in the middle of her anger she seemed to hear her father saying, in the playful way in which he used to warn her long ago, "Look out, little daughter, the tiger is getting loose." She stopped short.
"Who did that?" cried Nell. "I didn't suppose there was such a dishonourable girl in the school."
"Neither did I," answered Flynn Willis, quickly. "I never stopped to ask how the report started. I was so mad at being talked about that I did just what Cad Bailey told me to do, repeated everything I was told, just to tease the club and get even."