“I can but hope that the girls will refrain from practicing deceit. Of course, they cannot deceive me; no girl has ever yet succeeded in doing so, although many have tried to. But I can invariably detect the sham, and meet it successfully.”
“I hope you may never find yourself undone,” said Miss Preston, with a laugh. “Girls are pretty quick-witted creatures.”
Girls are not blind to their elders’ weaknesses and pet delusions, and it was an understood thing among them all that Mrs. Stone was easily “taken in,” to use their own expression. Consequently, they told her things, and laid innocent little traps for her to walk into, such as they would never have thought of doing for a more wide-awake teacher, or, at least, one who did not make such a strong point of her power of discernment.
It was the very night after the Caps and Capers escapade that the girls were gathered in the upper hall talking about the previous night’s fun.
“It’s no use talking; you can’t get ahead of Miss Preston,” said one of the older girls. “You may think you have, and feel aglow clear down to the cockles of your heart, then—whew! in she walks upon you as cool as—”
“Ice cream!” burst in another girl. “To my dying day, girls, I shall never forget that red ghost.”
“How did she ever find it out, I’d like to know,” asked Toinette. “Not a soul said a word, and my box didn’t come till the very last minute. I hardly had time to let the girls know, and how Miss Preston ever got her tub of cream in time is more than I can puzzle out. Maybe Mrs. Stores had it on hand.”
“Mrs. Stores! Yes, I guess so,” cried the girls, scornfully. “You don’t for one moment suppose that she would let us have a whole tub of ice cream, do you? Not much,” said Lou Perry.
“Why, if Miss Preston wanted it it would be different, you see,” answered Toinette.
“No, it wouldn’t, either. Miss Preston never bothers with the housekeeping or the housekeeper, although she is always just as lovely to her as she can be—she is to everybody, for that matter.”