‘So was I; but—’
‘Oh—’
‘My dear, do hush,’ pleaded Adeline. ‘You must let yourself listen.’
Gillian gave a desperate twist, but let her aunt smooth her hand.
‘All the class—almost—seem to have done it in some telegraphic way, hard to understand,’ proceeded Aunt Jane. ‘There must have been some stupidity on the part of the class-mistress, Miss Mellon, or it could not have gone on; but there has of late been a strong suspicion of cribbing in Caesar in Valetta’s class. They had got rather behindhand, and have been working up somewhat too hard and fast to get through the portion for examination. Some of them translated too well—used terms for the idioms that were neither literal, nor could have been forged by their small brains; so there was an examination, and Georgie Purvis was detected reading off from the marks on the margin of her notebook.’
‘But what has that to do with Val?’
‘Georgie, being had up to Miss Leverett, made the sort of confession that implicates everybody.’
‘Then why believe her?’ muttered Gillian. But her aunt went on—
‘She said that four or five of them did it, from the notes that Valetta Merrifield brought to school.’
‘Never!’ interjected Gillian.