"Come, Sarah," she said. "You must get up and go to bed."
With Miss Ellingwood's help, Sarah got up slowly, and sat down on her chair, and was immediately asleep once more. Miss Ellingwood was a little frightened. The child was evidently exhausted, which was not strange after her passion of tears. Miss Ellingwood glanced at her again, then at the couch which had been made up for a guest who had not arrived.
In a moment she went down the hall and rapped at the door of Sarah's room. No one was within. Smothered laughter a little farther down the hall implied the presence of Ellen and Mabel. Miss Ellingwood took a few steps in that direction, then returned. The warning bell would ring in a moment; after that, for fifteen minutes, the students were allowed to visit one another. This was really the first day of school, and rules were not so strictly kept. And Miss Ellingwood hated to scold.
She pushed open Sarah's door and went in, to look for her school dress and the things she would need for the night.
The smothered laughter became open shrieks as the warning bell rang.
"She's a perfect little spitfire," Ellen Ritter was saying. "I wish you could have seen her face when she saw me all dressed up. It was white and purple by turns, she was so angry."
Ethel Davis and Gertrude Manley, going arm-in-arm down the hall, had stopped at the door to hear, and the group of sub-Juniors opened to let them in. Blonde Ethel and dark-eyed Gertrude were Juniors, the next year they would be Middlers, and after that Seniors, and they sometimes allowed the dignity of their position to awe the sub-Juniors.
"I think it was a pretty mean trick to play on such a youngster," said Ethel hotly. "Now, if you had played it on Mabel, or Mabel on you, it might have had some point."
"Oh, she can take care of herself," laughed Ellen. "You needn't worry about her! Then she locked the door, and wouldn't let us in, and Mabel and I were very anxious to study, and—"
"Doubtless," laughed Gertrude.