Betsy went over to her and said, “Dearie, don’t cry now! Didn’t Miss Piquilin excuse you?”
“Yes. Yes,” the girl sobbed, “but, Oh Betsy, I wish I hadn’t done it, especially now that she has been so kind. When I thought she was a mean, horrid old thing, it wasn’t so hard to do. Oh dear! Oh dear!”
Then, all of her own free will, Becky told what she had done that she so deeply regretted. We were all horrified when Betsy told us half an hour later.
“We had a meeting of ‘The Lucky Thirteen’ in my room to try to decide what was best to do and Becky Hensley was with us. You simply never could guess the April Fool’s trick that Rose Hedge of ‘The Exclusive Three’ had planned, and so I will have to tell you.”
“Becky Hensley, you don’t mean to tell us that Rose Hedge actually wrote a letter to Professor Pixley and signed Miss Piquilin’s name to it?”
Becky nodded. “I feel like a traitor telling you girls. Rose and Hattie will hate me and they’ll make my life so miserable I’ll just have to leave school.”
Betsy Clossen slipped an arm about the younger girl. “Dear,” she said, “your conscience would make you more miserable if you did not try to right the wrong you have done in the lives of these two good people, and, as for Rose and Hattie, I do not like to speak unkindly of anyone, but do you think they are the girls your mother would want you to choose for your best friends?”
“No, indeed not,” Becky declared “and I do so want to get the letter back if I can.” Then she looked eagerly at Betsy, as she asked, “Do you suppose that we could get it before it is delivered? I slipped out and put it in the street mail box before the nine-ten collection.”
“Then it has been delivered by this time,” Betsy replied. “What was in the letter?”
“Rose wrote it,” Becky said, “and she wouldn’t let me read it all, but this was the beginning, ‘Dear Professor Pixley, thank you for asking me to marry you. I will be glad to do so next June,’ and then it was signed ‘from your loving Beatrice.’ Rose copied Miss Piquilin’s signature from a letter she found in the waste basket.”