All eyes were turned inquiringly to Caddie Bailey.
"I don't know how it started," she cried. "Honestly I don't. Lollie Briggs told me. She and several girls were talking about it this morning before breakfast, out in the hall. They were all furious, and they told me lots of things to say that would tease Lloyd and the rest of them nearly to death. I was mad, too, but I don't know who told in the first place."
"It was you, Lollie Briggs, who told me that somebody had hid in the Clark girls' closet," cried Lloyd. "You know you did, when I demanded to know who had started all this talk. Who was it?"
"I promised I wouldn't tell," said Lollie, sullenly, "and I won't. You needn't ask, for no power on earth could drag it out of me. So there!"
"It's like the story of Chicken Little," laughed Nell. "'Who told you, Goosey-Lucy? Ducky-Lucky. Who told you, Ducky-Lucky? Henny-Penny. Who told you, Henny-Penny?' Seems to me I'd make it my business to find out who this particularly contemptible Chicken Little happens to be, before I'd report any more of her tales."
Nell swept back into the hall, and, as the four girls started to resume their walk, Betty knocked on the cloak-room window, beckoning violently for them to come inside. They ran in pell-mell and shut the door behind them.
"I've found out!" cried Betty, in a tragic whisper. "It was Mittie Dupong! Cassie found her class-badge on their closet floor, and just now brought it down to her. She denied it was hers, but there's no mistaking that queer little stick-pin and chain fastened to it that she uses as a guard. She's the only one in school who has one like that—an owl's head in a wishbone, you know. Besides, there were her initials, M. D., on the under side of the badge. Cassie turned it over and showed them to her. She took it, then, but denied having been in the closet, and was so confused and contradicted herself so many times that anybody could see that she felt caught and was telling a story. She even vowed that she hadn't been near the west wing for a week. Then she ran out and banged the door, but Janie Clung said, 'Oh, what a story! I met her coming out of there Saturday night, on the way down to supper.'"
"What do you think we ought to do about it?" asked Katie. That was a question no one could answer. In the first flush of their indignation, it seemed to them that nothing they could do to Mittie would be sufficient punishment for such an act of meanness. They felt that she was a disgrace to the school, and decided that they would be conferring a benefit on the seminary if they could succeed in getting rid of her.
Even Betty failed for the time to remember the "Road of the Loving Heart" she was trying to leave behind her in every one's memory; and, if the little talisman on her finger pricked her tender conscience once or twice, she silenced it with the reflection that it was her duty to help punish the doer of such a contemptible deed. The name of the club finally suggested the means.
"She told all the secrets of the Shadow Club, and spoiled it," said Katie. "Now we just ought to shadow her. Haunt her, you know, like the Ku Klux Klan, or the White Caps, so she'll leave school and be afraid to listen again as long as she lives."