All the way Betty sat almost unconscious of the other people on the car, for at the first glance she saw no one whom she knew. From the first the incidents of the last few hours and those of the examination went through her mind. She tried to gather up a few fleeting impressions. Yes, it was Jakey who sat behind her, though it was unusual to see him there. That was why she could recall it, she supposed. He had grinned at her as she came back from the pencil sharpener. And there had been some whisking of something somewhere, just before Peggy had been seen to glare at one of the boys. That was probably what he was doing, taking something from her desk or teasing her in some way. My, it was a puzzle. But it was simply terrible to be under suspicion. Could it really be Betty Lee that was going through this? And the old nursery rhyme ran through her head:
“But when the old woman got home in the dark,
Up jumped the little dog and he began to bark!
He began to bark
And she began to cry,
’Goodness, mercy on me, this is none of I!’”
When she reached home she tried to say this to her dear mother, who was sitting by the window mending an almost hopeless stocking of Amy Lou’s. But when she got to the “this is none of I,” her lips quivered and she ran to bury her head in the comfortable lap and sob out the story as soon as she could control herself sufficiently. Here was some one who would take her word!
“Dear child, dear child!” soothingly said her mother. “Don’t take it too seriously. I know how hard it is when a young person cannot justify herself to schoolmates or friends, but surely you have already made a good impression on your teachers. Don’t you think that when Miss Heath comes back tomorrow she will handle the matter? You said that the assistant principal is well liked and that the pupils think him fair. I think that they will probe the matter a little farther.”
“But what more can they do?” asked Betty from the floor, her head against her mother’s knee. “There are those three papers just alike!”
“And you wrote yours out of your own head. Stick to that. Besides, your father and I believe in you. Haven’t we seen your lips moving in all the declensions and conjugations so far, while you committed them, and haven’t I asked you more than once the Latin or English words of your vocabularies?”
“You have, sweetest mother that there is!” Betty drew a long sigh. “Anyhow it doesn’t do any good to weep and wail, does it? I believe I’ll call up Peggy and see what she knows and tell her my tale of woe. I didn’t tell you that she had to stay after school, too, and got asked questions.”
“Are you sure that you’d better, child?”
“Call Peggy? oh, yes, Mother. Peggy would be sure to ask me tomorrow morning what Miss Masterson said. I’ll bet she’s aching to call me up right now!”
Mrs. Lee’s face grew serious as soon as Betty left her to call up her friend. She was more disturbed by Betty’s news than she would have admitted to the child herself. Betty was so comparatively new to the school with no background of long acquaintance as in the old school. She had more than half a mind to go to school with her tomorrow. But she thought better of that. Let them work it out first. If necessary, she or Betty’s father would go to see the principal.