“Then Hal had been dining in the school-room? Was he there when you came in?”
“No.”
“Were the doors open when you were dining there, Henry?”
“N—no.”
“You are sure that you did not meddle with them?”
“I do not know why I should,” said Henry, hastily and confusedly. “It is only the girls and the babies that have things there—and—and Miss Fosbrook herself had been at the cupboard in the morning; why shouldn’t she have left it undone herself, and the doors got open?”
“No, no!” cried Susan; “if they aren’t fastened they always burst open directly; and we never could have been in the room half the morning without noticing them!”
“Then you are certain that they were closed when you went down to dinner?”
Everyone was positive that the great glass doors flying out must have made themselves observed in that room full of children, especially as Susan remembered that she had been making a desk of the sloping part under them.
“Does anyone remember how long it was between Hal’s leaving the room and Bessie’s coming up?”