"We thought it better not to mention Miss West," said Grace slowly. "You can readily understand our attitude, Mabel. I feel as though I ought to tell you that she came to New York on the same train with us. She was in the car ahead of ours."
"Then I shall surely see her before she goes back to Overton. I suppose she came down purposely to be patted on the back for her big story. Now begin the terrible tale of how it all happened."
Grace began with their meeting of Kathleen West at the Overton station and of their ready acceptance of the newspaper girl for Mabel's sake. When she told of Kathleen's sudden avoidance of her and the other members of the Semper Fidelis Club, and of her subsequent intimacy with Alberta Wicks and Mary Hampton, Mabel exclaimed impatiently: "Those girls again! They were born trouble-makers, weren't they?"
"But they turned out beautifully," defended Grace, "only I haven't reached that part of my story yet. It is really a very nice part, only so many disagreeable things happened before it."
"I shall never notice Kathleen West again!" was Mabel's indignant cry when Grace had finished the account of Kathleen's attempt to spoil Arline's unselfish Christmas plan.
"You mustn't say that." Grace grew very earnest. "That was just the reason I didn't wish you to know. I can't bear to be a tale-bearer, but still I believe it is your right to know the facts. You are one of us, and we have no secrets from one another, yet I don't like to say any thing that will lower her in your estimation. She may have been a true friend to you."
"Don't worry about that part of it, Grace. You aren't a tale-bearer." Mabel reached forward to pat Grace's hand. "If only you had told me long ago."
Grace continued her narrative, ending with Kathleen's final attempt to be revenged on the Semper Fidelis Club, and the clever way in which she had been brought to book by none other than Alberta Wicks and Mary Hampton.
"What a little villain she is, and how splendidly Alberta and Mary turned out," interposed Mabel. "She was far too clever to give me the faintest inkling of the truth. I used to wonder why she was always so noncommittal about things at Overton. I laid it to her peculiar temperament, never suspecting that she had good reason for refusing to discuss her college life. I had an idea her cleverness would pave the way to great things for her at Overton. I supposed her to be very popular."
"Wait until I finish my discourse," smiled Grace, "then you shall hear what Patience, the All Wise, thinks of her." She went over rather hurriedly her recognition of "Larry, the Locksmith" in the streets of Overton, of how she had trailed him within sight of his hiding place, and of her tardy remembrance of her promise to her father. "I was uncertain what to do, when I happened to catch sight of Miss West," continued Grace. "An evil genius must have prompted me to take her into my confidence. But it was a good story, and Patience had told me only a day or two before that Miss West had been mourning over her lack of news for her paper. She made what I believed to be a promise to leave out the Oakdale part of the story and not to use my name within it. Not a line of the Oakdale part of the story appeared in the Overton papers. The chief of police kept his word, at any rate.