"Would you really like to know? Because I can tell you if you would," and they looked up to find Monica calmly regarding them from the doorway. They gazed back for a moment or two without answering. Monica advanced into the room, her hands twisted in her belt in lieu of pockets, her attitude one of careless defiance. Yet she looked such a slender slip of a girl for her fifteen years. She halted and spoke again, in hard matter-of-fact tones.
"I cheated in the exams. It was the geometry paper in the Cambridge Junior, and I carried a geometry book into the exam room under the front of my tunic. They caught me copying out a theorem which formed one of the questions."
Had she announced that she had committed a murder her listeners would not have been more horror-struck.
"Cheated in a public exam!" gasped Glenda. "What did they do when they found out?"
"Turned me out of the room," replied Monica hardily. "And of course that was the end of the exam for me."
"How awful you must have felt!" said Betty, and Ida inquired, her eyes wide and wondering: "Weren't you awfully sorry afterwards?"
"I should hope so," Irene struck in with something approaching a sneer.
Monica shrugged her shoulders. "No, why should I be sorry? Everyone cheats some time or other. It isn't in cheating you make the mistake, it's doing it so that you are found out."
"If that's how you feel about it," said Glenda with scorn, "I wonder Prinny had the cheek to expect us to associate with a girl of your principles. I said so all along."
"Here comes Miss Bennett," broke in Nat hurriedly from the doorway, and the Fifth hastily sought their desks.