"You were not with her that day, Miss Smartie," cried the revengeful
Linda. "And you see—she doesn't deny it."
"Of course she denies it!" Bess responded. "Do say something, Nan! Don't let that girl talk about you in this way."
Then Nan did open her lips—and what she said certainly amazed most of her hearers. "I was charged with taking a lavalliére from the counter. But it was found hanging from a lady's coat—"
"Where you hung it, when you saw you were caught!" interposed Linda.
"It was dreadful," Nan went on, brokenly. "I was so frightened and ashamed that I did not tell anybody about it."
"Nan!" cried Bess. "It's never true? You weren't arrested?"
"I—I should have been had the lavalliére not been found," her chum confessed. "Linda saw me and she told the man I was dishonest. I—I was so troubled by it all that I didn't tell anybody. It was the day I met that lady whose card I showed you, Bess. She was the lady whose coat caught up the chain. She was very kind to me."
"And Linda Riggs tried to make it worse for you, did she?" put in the indignant Walter.
"Hush, Walter!" commanded Miss Hagford. "We must have no more of this here. It is disgraceful. We will go directly home and your mother must know all the particulars. I don't know what she will say—I really do not," the troubled governess added.
"Oh, you can all go," snarled Linda. "You're welcome to the company of that Nan Sherwood. Pearl and I can find our way to her house. We'll leave you right now."