She liked pretty things. She couldn’t resist taking things when it was so easy to do it. Her fingers liked to take things. She didn’t always want what she had taken. Sometimes she wished afterwards that she hadn’t taken them. Her father was stingy and wouldn’t give her expensive trinkets. Her mother would but didn’t have the money. Her mother wanted her to have nice things.
When did she take the things? Oh, at night sometimes. Her roommate, Victoria Webster, slept like a log and didn’t miss her if she left the room. Or daytimes, by getting upstairs ahead of the other girls it was easy enough to dash into a room, grab a bracelet or a pin left carelessly about and hide it in her pocket. There were plenty of chances like that, when girls were so heedless with their belongings. Really, it was the girls’ own fault much more than hers. Yes, she had put those beads in Marjory’s pocket while the dress was on Marjory’s bed, and she had placed that purse in Sallie’s room. She wanted people to think they had taken them—it had seemed a clever thing to do—perhaps it wasn’t as clever as she had thought. But if Doctor Rhodes would just forgive her this time, she wouldn’t touch another thing, ever.
“But what about Sallie?” questioned Doctor Rhodes, hoping to find a little redeeming conscience in Laura. “And that other youngster, Marjory? How are they to be cleared?”
“I don’t care about them,” returned vulgar little Laura, hard-heartedly. “They’re just nobody. Marjory’s folks don’t amount to anything—just a queer old aunt in a small town—and everybody knows Sallie is just nothing—no folks or money or anything else. Now listen (Laura always said ‘Now listen’): My father has made money in the automobile business. He’s richer—”
“Do you mean to say,” demanded Doctor Rhodes, “that you’d actually be willing to let those honest little girls rest under a suspicion that they don’t deserve just because they happen to be poorer than you are? That you’d hide behind them—”
“I don’t care anything about them,” repeated Laura, stubbornly. “They’re nothing to me.”
“However,” returned Doctor Rhodes, “in simple justice, they will have to be cleared—and they are going to be cleared. I care, if you don’t, what happens to those children. It’s my duty to protect my pupils—”
“Well, then,” interrupted Laura, hopefully, “why not protect me? Folks’ll forget all about it after awhile and nobody’ll be hurt so very much. Aw, come on, now. Just forget it all.”
“I’m going to tell the truth,” declared Doctor Rhodes, who was finding Laura quite the most detestable child he had so far encountered. “There is no place in this school for a dishonest girl or for a girl with so little kindness for her fellow pupils. There is such a thing as school spirit—”
“Well, anyhow,” pleaded Laura, “just wait another two weeks. I’m not coming back after Easter vacation; so you might as well wait until then before you give me away, if you’re going to do it. My mother has a friend that says he’ll give me a good job in the movies; and that’s what I’d like to do. You can give those things back to their owners after I’m gone and say any old thing you like about me. It won’t hurt me any then.”