"Whyever did you do it?" one of them asked Laura curiously; it was a very pretty girl, called Evelyn, with twinkling brown eyes.
"I don't know," said Laura abjectly; and this was almost true.
"But I say! ... nasty tarradiddles about people who'd been so nice to you? What made you tell them?"
"I don't KNOW. They just came."
The girl's eyes smiled. "Well, I never! Poor little Kiddy," she said as she turned away.
But this was the only kind word Laura heard. For many and many a night after, she cried herself to sleep.
XIX.
Thus Laura went to Coventry.—Not that the social banishment she now suffered was known by that name. To the majority of the girls Coventry was just a word in the geography book, a place where ribbons were said to be made, and where for a better-read few, some one had hung with grooms and porters on a bridge; this detail, odd to say, making a deeper impression on their young minds than the story of Lady Godiva, which was looked upon merely as a naughty anecdote.
But, by whatever name it was known, Laura's ostracism was complete. She had been sampled, tested, put on one side. And not the softest-hearted could find an excuse for her behaviour.