“Here, I’ve kept you a beautiful unsquashed one,” announced Gretta. “Margot, what a frightfully interesting time you’ve had! But isn’t it awfully mysterious about Long Jake? His knowing the old man, I mean. And do you think he’ll really die?”
“I’m simply wondering with all my might,” declared Margot, “about how Long Jake knows him. I can’t understand it; but I feel somehow better about our old man, because he’s got mother.” Then, with her mouth very full indeed, “Now, I do wish you’d both tell me all about how Sybil came back.”
“Little beggar!” Josy shook her fist in the direction of the opposite dormitory, from which no sounds came. “She arrived in at the school gate with her arms full of parcels; and Gretta and I saw her. She’d gone to that awful tiny cottage-shop place about two miles away—you know the place; we passed it last Saturday, and I suppose Sybil saw it then. I shouldn’t have thought it sold anything, but, anyhow, she managed to spend I don’t know how much on the most awful coloured sweets and things; just because she’d made up her mind, with the help of Adela, that they’d have a feast, too—nurse or no nurse! I can tell you she reckoned wrongly, though; she’d seen Stella, but she’d gone on all the same, and bought her things, and turned up as cheeky as a sparrow!”
“But she was most frightfully tired when she got back,” broke in Gretta; “and we didn’t know what to do, because we didn’t want her to get into a row, and we knew we’d simply have to tell.”
“What happened then?” asked Margot in great interest.
“Oh, Miss Read came out of the school-door to see if the brake had come for the Redford girls, just as we were standing staring at Sybil as though she was a kind of ghost.”
“She took in the whole thing in a minute, and we didn’t have to say a word. She didn’t say much either; she just marched her off, parcels and all, straight to Miss Slater’s room!” Thus Josy, with, it is feared, a certain amount of relish for the story she was telling.
“Oh, I do hope she wasn’t punished,” broke in Margot. “I can’t help feeling, you know——”
“Well, we haven’t seen her since, anyway,” continued Josy; “but there’s no sign of a feast in that dormer! Gretta’s sorry for her, but I can’t say that I am; I think she deserves it!”
“I went to Miss Read,” said Gretta, interrupting at this point, “and I told her that I didn’t think Sybil understood rules yet, properly; and that I thought, perhaps, I hadn’t looked after her enough; for I do think that, you know, Margot. I’ve thought so much of music and things——”