“Thank you, but not yet. I’ve got something to say—that all of you must hear.”
Of course, everybody was astonished by this speech and every eye turned toward the young “Peer” who was about to prove herself of noble “rank” as never in all her life before.
Dorothy began to suspect what might be coming and by a silent clasp of Gwendolyn’s waist and a protesting shake of her head tried to prevent her saying more.
But Gwendolyn as silently put aside the appealing arm and folding her own arms stood rigidly erect. It wouldn’t have been the real Gwen if she hadn’t assumed this rather dramatic pose, which she had mentally rehearsed many times that day. Also, she had chosen this quiet hour and place as the most effective for her purpose, and she had almost coerced Lady Jane into letting her come.
“Schoolmates and friends, I want to confess to you the meanest things that ever were done at dear Oak Knowe. From the moment she came here I disliked Dorothy Calvert and was jealous of her. In less than a week she had won Miss Muriel’s heart as well as that of almost everybody else. I thought I could drive her out of the school, if I made the rest of you hate her, too. I’d begun to teach the boot-boy to draw, having once seen him attempting it. I painted him a death’s head for a copy, and gave him my pocket-money to buy a mask of the Evil One.”
“Oh! Gwendolyn how dared you? You horrid, wicked girl!” cried gentle Marjorie, moved from her gentleness for once.
“Well, I’ll say this much in justice to myself. That thing went further than I meant, which was only to have him put pictures of it around in different places. He’d told me about keeping a goat in the old drying-room, and of course he couldn’t always keep it still. The kitchen folks put the pictures and the goat’s noises together and declared the house was haunted. I told the maids that they might lay that all to the new scholar from the States, and a lot of them believed me.”
Even loyal Laura now shrank aside from her paragon, simply horrified. She had helped to spread the rumor that Dorothy was a niece of Dawkins, but she had done no worse than that. It had been left to Jack-boot-boy to finish the contemptible acts. He got phosphorus from the laboratory, paint from any convenient color box, and his first success as a terrifier had been in the case of Millikins-Pillikins, at whose bed he had appeared—with the results that have been told. He it had been who had frightened the maid into leaving, and had spread consternation in the kitchen.
“And in all these things he did, I helped him. I planned some of them but he always went ahead and thought worse ones out. Yet nobody, except the simpletons below stairs, believed it was Dorothy who had ‘bewitched’ the house,” concluded that part of Gwendolyn’s confession.
Yet still she stood there, firmly facing the contempt on the faces of her schoolmates, knowing that that was less hard to bear than her own self-reproach had been. And presently she went on: