“He can’t be, if he ate all that he stole before we got here,” Bess declared.
Only Nan was silent. She suspected at once what the commanding summons meant. It was a teacher, perhaps Dr. Prescott herself. The party was a failure and all the girls whom she had invited would, with herself and chum, be punished for the frolic.
As she slowly approached the door, a voice from outside faintly reached her ear: “Let me in! open the door!”
Nan was astonished by this. It sounded like somebody in distress. She hurriedly turned the bolt and opened the door a little way. There was a keen wind blowing off the water and the garments of the person on the doorstep fluttered in it, so that Nan knew at once it was a woman; but she could not see her face.
“Who is it?” whispered Nan, while the other truants held their breath.
“For goodness’ sake, let me in, child!” exclaimed a vexed voice and the woman pushed by, slamming the door when once she was inside. It did not need the black veil jerked up over her hat to assure the girls assembled that Mrs. Cupp was under the veil!
“Good-night!” murmured Laura, falling dramatically into May Winslow’s arms. “‘All is lost!’ the captain shouted.”
“Sh-h!” gasped the girl from Alabama. “Don’t make her mad.”
“I couldn’t,” declared the irrepressible. “She was born that way.”
But suddenly Nan, as well as some of the other girls, saw that the stern matron of Lakeview Hall had been crying. Her cheeks were tear-stained and she was still sobbing convulsively as she leaned, exhausted, with her back against the door.