"I said the woman was a cat," commented Miss Barnes when the news reached her ears.
What Miss Lucilla Ryder said in the first fervor of her surprise no one save Belinda knew, for their interview was behind closed doors, but when she came from her room to meet the detective Miss Lucilla's calm dignity was without a ripple.
The investigation of teachers' credentials is now her pet hobby, and she freezes at the mention of the French nobility.
CHAPTER V
THE BLACK SHEEP'S CHRISTMAS
FIVE days before Christmas the school of the Misses Ryder emptied its pupils and teachers into the bosoms of more or less gratified families, and closed its doors for the holiday season.
The principals lingered for two days after the girls left, in order to see that the furniture was covered, the furnace fires were allowed to die, the gas was turned off, the shades were decorously drawn, the regular butcher's, baker's and milkman's supplies were stopped. Then they, too, went out into the world, for they always spent Christmas with the old aunt who lived upon the ancestral Ryder acres in New Hampshire.
Five of the servants had joined the exodus. Only Ellen, the fat cook, and Rosie, the laundress, were left in the basement, and in the back hall bedroom on the top floor was the Youngest Teacher, who had submitted to enthusiastic kisses from her departing girl adorers, had responded cheerfully to pleasant adieus from her employers, and had settled down to face a somewhat depressing situation. On Christmas Eve she was still facing it pluckily.
A storm of wind and sleet was beating at the windows, and the little hall bedroom, unheated for days past, had taken on the chill that seems to have body and substance.