"What do you mean by this, Miss Bessie Marchant?" three or four called out all at once when at last she made her appearance puffing and blowing through hurrying.
"Dreadfully sorry, girls, to be so late; really couldn't help it. Mean?" looking ever so solemnly sweet, "mean? You were all such dears I couldn't leave one of you out," and taking hold of the two girls she had the least confidence in marched off, all the others following.
She told the whole story the same evening to Nanna, alone. "You would have died of laughing if you'd seen the faces of those girls as they cuddled round that pump, that you would. Some were hanging on to the handle, they felt that took back like. But I got them all to the meeting."
"But what did you do it for?"
"That's just what they wanted to know, and not one guessed. I told them after they came out, though."
"Well, what was your reason?"
"To pay that man out, of course. He pretended he wanted the class for himself, and I thought at least for one Sunday he shouldn't have that pleasure. It was splendid fun just to picture how he would look when he went into the room and found no one there. It did tickle the girls, I can tell you."
"But you don't mean to say you told them all that!"
"Of course I did. I was obliged to tell them how he had refused Mrs. Waring's offer, and so I explained to them how just for once I had paid him out."
"And don't you suppose they will go and tell him what you have said?"