For a few minutes Miss Churchill noticed nothing wrong, but presently as she looked round from the blackboard she heard a decided titter, and turning in the direction from which the sound came, she saw that one of the girls, Hetty Warner, a quiet, inoffensive child, was endeavouring to conceal her merriment by means of her handkerchief.
"What are you laughing at, Hetty?" she said, somewhat sternly.
"Nothing, Miss Churchill," muttered the girl, as best she could.
"There must have been some reason, and I insist upon knowing it," and Miss Churchill came a few steps nearer to the culprit's desk. A hasty movement between two of the girls did not escape her, and quick as thought she intercepted a small piece of paper which Olive Franklyn was frantically trying to put out of sight.
The girls held their breath as their teacher opened and smoothed out the paper, which Olive had screwed up into a ball rather than hand it up as it was. Those who had been in the form before remembered a similar occasion when Miss Churchill had confiscated a little scribbled note which was being passed along, and the punishment that had been inflicted for such an underhand trick. But that was as nothing to the present scene, for Miss Churchill held aloft, so that all could see it, the paper on which was an unmistakable caricature of herself, in the attitude she assumed when delivering a lesson.
"What a shame!" cried several of the girls simultaneously, but she stopped them with a motion of her hand.
"Who drew this?" she enquired, in a well-controlled voice; but her eyes flashed, and it was evident that she was very, very angry.
For a moment no one answered, and she put the question again, while the girls waited breathlessly; those who were innocent were eager to know who the culprit was. Only two of them looked at all guilty, and those were the Franklyns. Miss Churchill, looking round at all the faces before her, noticed the frightened look of one, and the off-hand, nonchalant air of the other. As yet she scarcely knew them apart, so she enquired of the one nearest to her, who happened to be Elsa: "Did you draw this ... thing?"
A scarcely audible "No" came from Elsa's trembling lips, and Miss Churchill was about to tell her to speak louder, when Olive stood up, and said, in a bold, defiant tone: "Elsa knows nothing about it, I did it," and then she sat down again calmly, to await her punishment.
"You will apologise to me for your rudeness before you go home, and you will copy out a hundred lines of French translation and bring it to me, to-morrow, without a fault, or else I shall show this drawing to Miss Buckingham," was all the teacher said, in very quiet tones; but for once Olive was subdued, and behaved tolerably well for the rest of the morning.