“Wouldn’t you rather have people remember you with liking and respect?” asked Doctor Rhodes, thoroughly shocked by Laura’s hardened conscience. “Have you no shame at all?”
Laura shrugged her shoulders, a trick she had perfected by watching Madame Bolande. She tilted her chin and partly closed her eyes—to show her complete indifference to what people might think of her. She was not at all pretty when she did these things.
“I can see no reason for sparing you in any way,” said Doctor Rhodes, coldly. “You may go to your room now and write for your mother to come for you at once. If she isn’t here inside of three days I shall telegraph for her. Within five minutes after your departure, I shall state on the bulletin board that Miss Gladys de Milligan has been expelled under circumstances that absolutely prove the innocence of every other pupil in this school.”
All this was done. Untruthful Laura, making her farewells airily, told her friends that she was merely going home a little ahead of time in order to have a longer vacation for spring shopping and necessary dressmaking. She’d see them all again right after Easter, and bring back lovely presents for all of them. She borrowed Augusta’s best middy scarf in order, she said, that her mother might select about a dozen like it for her to give to the other girls. Augusta, of course, never saw either cheap little Laura or the precious scarf again.
Laura was certainly not a nice child; but circumstances were against her. She possessed a decidedly foolish, unladylike and not altogether truthful mother so perhaps Laura’s lack of good qualities was not entirely her own fault. With a really nice mother, she might have been a really nice girl; but Mrs. Milligan’s daughter had very little chance.
During the last three days of Laura’s stay, it seemed to Jean that things were not clearing up as rapidly as Miss Blossom had predicted. She wondered if, after all, nothing had been done for Marjory. Poor little Marjory, in spite of Jean’s encouraging words, in spite of Mrs. Henry’s reassuring smiles and Miss Blossom’s hopeful glances, could see no way out of her troubles. Hazel still drew her skirts aside when Marjory passed and snippy little Lillian Thwaite still almost tipped over backwards in her efforts to turn her very small nose up in Marjory’s presence (for sticking-up purposes, it was really a very poor nose). And to Jean’s surprise, there was Laura, apparently perfectly unconcerned, going on just as she always had. Was nothing ever going to be done to clear Marjory and Sallie?
Notwithstanding many unusual kindnesses from her Lakeville friends—even always-hungry Mabel begged her to eat part of her favorite dessert—puzzled Marjory felt that the sky was dark above her and the world a terrible place for little girls just her size. And then, quite suddenly, Laura was whisked away by her mother, and Doctor Rhodes, chalk in hand and frowning prodigiously, was approaching the fateful bulletin board.
You can imagine how, five minutes after Laura’s going, the always curious girls flocked to the bulletin board to see what Doctor Rhodes had posted thereon. How eagerly they read the astonishing announcement and how their tongues wagged afterwards. How glad Marjory and Sallie were to have the mystery cleared away and how relieved the Lakeville girls felt at having their precious Marjory emerge from the cloud that had obscured her happiness for so long a time.
“Right after Gladys’s mother came this morning,” said Sallie, “there was something going on in the office. It sounded very much like a very angry woman telling Doctor Rhodes just what she thought of him; but of course I didn’t stay to listen—I wanted to just awfully. But when I went back afterwards with the message I was waiting to deliver, the lady was gone and poor Doctor Rhodes was mopping perspiration from his forehead, although the room was quite cold. I guessed he’d been having a right trying interview with somebody. He looked perfectly wilted.”
Mabel giggled. “I guess he had one all right if it was Mrs. Milligan. We used to hear her in Lakeville.”