The class in reading was now called up; and as Mabel took her stand about the middle of the row, she gave her attention, not to the task before her, but to the locket lying hidden in the cloak-room, and tried to contrive a way out of her difficulty.
Suddenly a thought struck her, and she gave a great sigh of relief. This was the day on which Belle took her music-lesson after school was dismissed: it might be that she would not discover that the locket had been taken out of her desk till she came to go home; and she, Mabel, would have time to put it back after the other children had left.
Miss Ashton's voice roused her, calling back her thoughts to her lesson and reminding her that it was her turn to read; but she did not know where the place was, and when it was pointed out to her by Belle, she stumbled and blundered over words that she knew quite well, and read most disgracefully, finishing her performance with a new burst of crying.
Miss Ashton did not find fault with her, believing perhaps that she really could not help it, but passed on to the next. Would she have taken it so quietly if she had known the true cause of Mabel's excitement? The child could not help asking herself this question, or wondering what punishment she would be called on to bear if her teacher knew all. Not for twenty lockets such as Belle's would she have borne the miserable feelings from which she was suffering now.
So the time dragged on, heavily, heavily, till it was the hour for dismissal; and the little ones prepared to go home.
Mabel watched Belle's every motion, scarcely daring to hope that she would not discover her loss before she went downstairs to her music-lesson; but Belle, never dreaming but that her treasure lay safely hidden in the far corner where she had left it, put books and slate back into her desk in haste, and at last followed Miss Ashton from the room.
Then Mabel hurried into the cloak-room, a new fear taking hold of her, as fears without number or reason ever will of the guilty. Suppose any of the other children had lifted her sacque and found the locket beneath it! No: it lay upon the floor still,—not just as she had left it, it seemed to her fearful, suspicious eyes. But no one turned upon her with accusing words or looks; and she believed herself safe, if she could but manage to be the last child to go.
Nanette, her nurse, who was waiting for her, was too well used to her freaks to be much surprised when she declared she was not going home just yet; and stood by, with what patience she might, to await the pleasure of her hard young task-mistress, who plumped herself down on the floor upon her sacque with a look of dogged determination, which Nanette knew well would change to one of furious passion if she were crossed.
As Lily Norris left the room, she could not refrain from a parting shot at Mabel.
"Mabel," she said, "in the 'Nonsense Book' there is a picture of a sulky girl sitting on a carpet, and the reading about her begins,