Strange to say, in all the miserable and remorseful thoughts which had made her wretched since yesterday afternoon, it had not once entered her mind how she was to face Nellie when the poor child should make known the misfortune which had befallen her.
One by one the children came in, and how awkward Gracie felt in meeting them may readily be imagined by any one who has suffered from some similar and well-merited disgrace. Still she tried, as she whispered to Hattie she should do, to "behave as if nothing had happened;" and when little Belle, after looking at her wistfully for a moment as if undecided how to act, came up and kissed her, saying, "I'm glad to see you, Gracie," she answered rather ungraciously, "I'm sure it's not so very long since you saw me," and sent the dear little girl away feeling very much rebuffed.
And yet she really felt Belle's innocent friendliness, and her sweet attempt to make her welcome and at her ease; but pride would not let her show it.
Nellie was one of the last to arrive, and her troubled and woe-begone face startled Gracie and smote her to the heart.
"Such a dreadful thing has happened to me," said Nellie, when she was questioned by the other children; and the tears started to her eyes afresh as she spoke.
"What is it? What is it?" asked a number of eager voices.
"I don't know how it can have happened," said Nellie, hardly able to speak for the sobs she vainly tried to keep back. "I have been so, so careful; but there is an ugly spot like ink or something on my mat. I can't think how it ever came there, for I put it in my desk very carefully when school began yesterday, and did not take it out till I got home, and I did not know there was any ink near it. But when I unrolled it last evening the stain was there, and mamma thinks it is ink, and she cannot get it out. And I've taken such pains to keep the mat clean and nice."
And here poor Nellie's voice broke down entirely, while Gracie, feeling as if her self-command, too, must give way, opened her desk and put her head therein, with a horrible choking feeling in her throat.
"We'll all tell Mrs. Howard it came somehow through not any fault of yours," said Lily. "Never mind, Nellie, yours is the best mat, anyhow: we all know it;" and Lily cast a defiant and provoking glance at Gracie, which was quite lost upon the latter.
Lily had suggested on the day before, that when Gracie came back to school they should "all behave just as if nothing had happened," just what Gracie intended to do; but generous Lily had said it in quite a different spirit from that in which Gracie proposed it to herself.