Anne shrugged slightly, and seemed to be her old indifferent self. She had in that moment recalled her promise of the night before, when she had said: “Coward! All you are afraid of is that I will squeal. Well, I won’t, but I don’t want you ever again to speak to me. I’m through!”
“This other package of compositions, Kathryn, was found in your trunk and—”
The girl angrily interrupted the speaker. “Mrs. Martin, what right has anyone to look in my trunk and take out of it something belonging to me?”
Mrs. Martin found it hard to speak calmly. “We reserve the right to read all letters and search where we will. This is stated in the seminary folders and is read by the mothers of the pupils before they choose this school for their daughters to attend, and, as for stealing—what did you call it, Kathryn, when at night you entered Miss Torrence’s home and took something which did not belong to you?”
“I didn’t take it,” the girl flared. “You just said that you found it in that—that tattling girl’s room.”
“Anne has not tattled.” The principal’s voice was hard now. “Kathryn, go to your room at once and begin your packing. I shall wire your mother to meet the afternoon train, as you will be on it.”
Anne Petersen expected to hear more of the incident, but it was evidently closed. Miss Torrence had taken an opportunity to thank the girl for her kindness to her mother, adding that she would make that frail invalid most happy if she could find time, now and then, to call upon her, and, to her own surprise, the girl soon found the moments that she spent in the bow window with the little old lady (who reminded her so much of her own grandmother) were among the happiest of her day.
There she often met Virginia Davis. Too, she promised to write the very best story that she could for the second edition of the Manuscript Magazine, and she said that she would ask Belle Wiley to do the same.
With the departure of Kathryn Von Wellering, the large front room was left vacant, and, as the two small rooms occupied by Anne and Belle were on the north side of the school, and cold in winter, Mrs. Martin asked them if they would like to be roommates and share the large, sunny room, formerly occupied by Kathryn.
Mrs. Martin and Miss Torrence had been right. Anne Petersen, who had scorned lying, even when she had resorted to it, developed into one of the finest girls in the seminary; one whom every teacher could trust.