‘I think she’s really fond of the Babe,’ observed Ruth, as she followed the head girl across the room.
‘Oh, yes,’ admitted Margaret, with a shrug of her shoulders; ‘Jean told her she’d got to be.’
At the window-seat she stopped and forgot Angela for the moment. The sight of the child who sat there, looking so white and wretched, touched her.
‘Cheer up, kiddie!’ she said, sitting down beside her. Ruth Oliver discreetly moved on.
‘Get away!’ gasped Jean.
Margaret stroked her hand, but Jean drew it away sharply, and shifted her position so that she looked out of the window. Her eyes wandered across the drive and fell on the little building in the field, where she and Angela had passed their eight days of quarantine with the youngest girl in the school. Somehow, Jean could not bear the sight of it to-day, and she moved round restively, till she faced Margaret again.
‘Oh, do leave me alone!’ she said fiercely; and the head girl felt rather helpless, and left her.
In the junior playroom, Angela had relapsed at the sight of Ruth Oliver into a fresh fit of crying.
‘What is the matter, Angela?’ demanded Ruth, for once almost losing her patience.
‘Matter?’ sobbed Angela, leaning back for support on the substantial arm of Mary Wells. ‘I’m full of re–remorse, and–and penitence! So would you be, if–if you were as bad and–and as sinful as me!’