“No,” Blue Bonnet admitted. “You—you know about the other time?”
“Yes.”
“But I made that up—and that first time—it didn’t seem very wrong. You see I’ve never been to school before I came to Woodford; and tutors aren’t very—strict. At least, mine weren’t.”
“How about the second time, Elizabeth? You must have known then.”
“I couldn’t stay,” Blue Bonnet answered. “I had to get out-of-doors. I think fifteen is rather too late to begin to go to school, after all.”
Mr. Hunt smiled a little. “It is because you are so unused to school routine, and school discipline that we have been very patient with you, Elizabeth. But things cannot go on as they have been doing. Do you want your class to go on without you? If they do, it will not be because you have not the ability but the will to keep up with them.”
“I never thought of that,” Blue Bonnet said.
“I want you to think of it very seriously. And now, what do you suppose I am going to do with you?”
Blue Bonnet caught her breath. Her ideas as to what a principal might or might not be expected to do under the circumstances, were indefinite—and a little disquieting. “I don’t know,” she said.
“I am going to put you on your honor not to disobey in this fashion again; and to try to conform more carefully to all the rules of the school,—which will include, most emphatically, being more punctual. Your record, in that respect, Elizabeth, is decidedly very far from what it should be.”