"I am sorry but I am in bad at school again."
"Again," repeated Rosalie. "Don't you mean still?"
"Miss Hodges wants you to come with me—that is, she says I can not come back until you do. She is going to ask you to give a sort of pledge of good behavior for me, and you can't do it, for I am sure to break over once in a while. So there you are. Don't you think Doris could teach me at home this year?"
"But what in the world did you do, dear?" demanded Doris.
"Well, you will be horrified, of course, Doris—but it wasn't as bad as it sounds. I did not feel well to begin with, and things went wrong from the first. Walter Dwight had some candy, and he passed it to me, and I was eating it—"
"In school?"
"Yes. And Miss Hodges saw me and told me to go to the window and throw it out—a very bad and unsanitary thing, throwing candy all over the play-grounds, but Miss Hodges makes us do it—and so I went to the window and looked out—and—I stood there a minute or so looking around to see what was going on in the playground, and I saw a robin sitting in the big maple, and I squinted my eye up at him, and aimed with the candy, and shot it at him."
Zee looked up sadly, and then lowered her eyes again. "Everybody laughed, and Miss Hodges was not at all pleased. She said I was a little nuisance."
A vague flickering smile passed from face to face around the table.