Reading Hilary’s reply, Juliet at first smiled and looking at Hilary formed with her lips the words “poor Hilary,” for she quite feared for the girls’ grades in Dr. Carver’s hands, and wondered if they would be permitted to make up the work, or if they would be counted absent, with a zero to their credit. No one could tell what Dr. Carver would do with her ideas of strict discipline. Then a disagreeable thought came to Juliet. There was a pang of memory, with a sinking of the heart! “O, Hilary!” she wrote, “I set your clock right, when I came in to leave Betty’s watch. Was that it?”
Hilary read, looked up at Juliet, across the two girls who sat between, and at the look on Juliet’s face she could scarcely control her own. She coughed, put her face in her handkerchief, and moved a little in order that she might be screened from Miss Carver’s view. She felt that eagle eye flashed in her direction. It was dangerous to lose the place in any class, but particularly in Dr. Carver’s. That fact soon sobered Hilary, and she prepared to be called on, rather hoping, indeed, that she would have a chance to make a grade. Fortunately, she caught the last phrase in the translation of the girl who was reciting and in the discussion which followed on the syntax of a word managed to find where the class was reading. It was just in time, for “Miss Lancaster” was the next call.
At the close of the recitation hour a group of amazed girls gathered. “For pit-tee’s sake,” said Pauline, “we wondered why you didn’t come and didn’t come, and Dr. Carver looked so mad at having about half the class gone. She asked us what was the matter and nobody knew,—what was the trouble?”
“My old clock,” replied Hilary. Just then the penitent Juliet joined Hilary. “Come on, Hilary, let’s go up to Dr. Carver and explain. I came in to bring Betty’s watch and noticed that your clock was all wrong, so I set it back right by my watch. Betty’s had stopped, but I didn’t wind it, afraid to fuss with it. I never thought—”
“Of course you didn’t. It was all my fault for letting the clock go that way.”
The other girls filed out into the hall, while Hilary and Juliet went up to Dr. Carver’s desk to explain. Cathalina, coming in for her Cicero lesson, was hailed by the crowd and asked why she was on time. She looked blankly at them, while laughter ran round the circle. “I just came from the library,” said she.
“O, you weren’t in your room, then; it is explained!”
Still wondering, Cathalina went on into the class room, leaving the buzzing crowd of girls who moved on and out of the building.
“How did it happen,” asked Hilary, “that none of the rest of you girls had the time?”
“I did,” said Julia, “but by the ‘irony of fate’ I never looked at my watch and swallowed everything you said,—after hearing the bell, too!”