“My real lace collar!” cried Mrs. Rhodes. “I suppose this is Gladys’s trunk?”
“Oh, certainly. Can’t you smell the perfume? Nobody else uses this kind. Besides, her name is on the outside.”
“Yes, that’s right. Now, I wonder what we’d better do about this.”
“We’ll have to talk it over with Father. I’m afraid there’s no doubt this time.”
“I’m sure there isn’t,” returned Mrs. Rhodes. “It’s the de Milligan girl without question. I don’t know why I didn’t suspect her sooner.”
“Well, I didn’t,” said Mrs. Henry. “And she was right in my own corridor. I’m awfully sorry about all this.”
“I’d have been sorrier,” returned the older woman, grimly, “if it had been any other girl. I never did like this one.”
When Laura was called into Doctor Rhodes’s office and invited to explain how all those things had found their way into her trunk, she appeared to be very much surprised. She was sure she didn’t know. She said she supposed that Sallie Dickinson had put them there, or if not Sallie, one of the maids; or possibly Marjory Vale. Marjory was ever a deceitful child, much given to thievery. She herself had often warned the other girls against Marjory.
Laura, standing with her back against the wall, seemed quite calm and unconcerned, except that she shifted her chewing gum from side to side with greater frequency than usual.
Doctor Rhodes had rather a terrible eye. Two of them in fact. He fixed them both on Laura’s unperturbed countenance and gazed so very sternly at her that presently Laura began to quail. She gulped suddenly and swallowed her gum. And then she began to stammer excuses.