Dorothy moved uneasily. Her tongue felt so parched that speech was difficult; then she said in a low tone, “I spoke to my mother when I was at home, without, of course, giving her facts or names, and I asked her what I ought to do.”
“What did she say?” The Head was smiling, and Dorothy took heart again.
“Mother told me to make such an effort to win the Bursary for myself, that it would not matter in the end whether the girl was fit or unfit to have enrolled as a candidate.”
“Very good advice, too. But I see your position again. If you speak you let your rival down; from your point of view, it would not be playing the game. If you keep silent, and win the Bursary, but yet because of this story of your father’s past you are passed over and it is given to Rhoda, the irony of the situation will be fairly crushing.” The Head was looking at Dorothy with great kindness in her manner, and Dorothy was comforted because she was understood.
“You will not force me to speak?” she asked, greatly daring, for the Head was by no means a person to be trifled with.
“No; I will even admire you for your desire not to do so, though it makes me feel as if I were compounding a felony.” The Head laughed as she spoke; then, becoming suddenly grave, she went on, “If it should turn out that you win the Bursary, and the governors will not let you take it, I shall require of you that you tell me and tell them of this thing you are keeping to yourself. The honour of the school demands this at your hands. It is not fair that the Lamb Bursary should go to a girl who has won it by a trick or by any keeping back of that which should be known.”
“No, it is not fair,” admitted Dorothy, and a dreadful dismay filled her heart to think that she might have to tell of what she had seen in the showroom of Messrs. Sharman and Song.
“Good night, and now let us leave all these problems for the future to solve,” said the Head, holding out a slim white hand for Dorothy to shake.
Such a wave of gratitude flowed into the heart of Dorothy, to think she had not to betray Rhoda, that, yielding to impulse, she carried that slim white hand to her lips, kissing it in the ardour of her devotion and admiration. Then she went out of the room with her head carried high, and such a feeling of elation in her heart that it was difficult to refrain from dancing a jig on the stairs.
“Dorothy, you are a fraud!” cried Hazel, as Dorothy came into the study, smiling, radiantly happy, and looking as if it were morning instead of nearly bedtime. “Here have Margaret and I been snivelling in sympathy with you, because we thought you were having a ragging from the Head for some misdemeanour or other, instead of which you come prancing upstairs as if the whole place belonged to you.”