“In the way of sweet temper—I quite agree with you.”
Kitty slammed the front gate with an energy that brought her mother to the door. Mrs. Clark was something of an invalid, and her daughter had thought it as well not to trouble her with any account of Friday’s doings until she found out what the consequences were. And a particularly troublesome case had kept the doctor from reading the signs of the times.
But there was no keeping things back any longer, and Kitty went promptly to the heart of the matter, going into the subject with a fullness and a fluency that reduced her mother to the verge of hysterics.
“I don’t know what your father will say!” she cried, eying Kitty in mingled amazement and dismay. Girls never did such things in her day.
Kitty retired to the old swing on the side piazza. There was nothing to be ashamed of—they had only stood up for their rights. Try as she would, she could not shut out the sight of the pleasant, busy classroom, with Blue Bonnet sitting just in front of her. It had required some diplomacy to effect such an arrangement; Miss Rankin would never have allowed it. In her secret heart, Kitty had always felt that she stood just a little nearer to Blue Bonnet Ashe than any of the other club members.
But of course, all that was changed now. One could not be friends with a girl who—
Kitty gave the swing an impatient push. She was glad that she had not gone to the matinée with them on Saturday—though Alec had been mighty angry with her for holding out; Blue Bonnet should see that they were not all going to—
She was glad, too, that she had cut short Amanda’s enthusiastic account of the afternoon’s delights.
Kitty was not the only one of the fourteen to whom the thought of the classroom from which they had been exiled had grown suddenly very dear.
On the other hand, their fellow-pupils were giving no less thought to them. When recess came, and there was still no sign of them, excitement ran high, so did conjecture.