“Do you mean they didn’t tell the truth?” Jacquette demanded.
“Well, you know how Bess is, Jacquette. She never had a bad intention in her life, and she thought she was doing the whole thing for the sake of Sigma Pi, don’t you see? Marion was her Sigma Pi sister, and in trouble, and she felt that she just had to answer Mr. Branch in the way that would help Marion out. But he saw right through the story and now she’s suspended for a month and Marion Crandall is expelled and Sigma Pi is disgraced, and the Kappa Delts will just be in clover!”
“Oh, it’s awful!” Jacquette exclaimed. “It makes me wish——” She stopped short, and closed her lips. “Come, Mary,” she said, gently. “I don’t blame you. You made a mistake, and we all do that. I want you to eat something before the bell rings. The rest of you girls had better do the same, too,” she added over her shoulder as she drew Mary along. “We can’t live on excitement.”
From that moment until she hurried away from school in the afternoon, carefully avoiding the possibility of meeting any of the girls, a busy undercurrent of thinking was going on in Jacquette’s mind. To her disappointment, when she reached the house, she found it deserted, but the first thing she did was to get the morning paper and read all about the action of the Board of Education. Then, after walking back and forth through the empty rooms, and standing at the window, looking impatiently down the street, she turned with a sudden impulse and going to the telephone, called Flo Burton.
Ever since their memorable interview with Mr. Pierce in the principal’s room, Jacquette had been finding out good qualities in this harum-scarum girl, and she turned to her now in the hope of sympathy. Flo had been missing from the council of Sigma Pi sisters at noon and, remembering that Flo’s classes were arranged, this year, so that she went home before luncheon, Jacquette thought there might be a chance of finding her there now, though she knew that most of the girls had probably flocked to the sorority rooms to talk things over.
Flo answered the telephone, and Jacquette plunged into her subject with the first words.
“I want to talk with you,” she said. “Do you realise that we’re in disgrace with the school authorities?”
“You mean on account of Marion and Bess?”
“Of course, that; but I was thinking, just now, about what the Board has done. Seems to me all fraternities and sororities are in disgrace from now on, with this rule in force, shutting us out from all the school honours and privileges.”
“But—Jacquette Willard!” came in a scandalised tone. “Surely you can’t mean you’d turn traitor to Sigma Pi for the sake of holding a class office?”