That gentle expression of sympathy, accompanied by the tender little caress, stirred into life an emotion hitherto unknown to Mignon’s rebellious soul. Assailing her as a climax to the strain of the past few days, it completely unnerved her. Her self-control vanishing she dropped her suitcase and burst into wild weeping. Winding her arms about the sobbing girl, Marjorie tried to soothe her as best she might. Fortunately for them, no passer-by intruded upon the little scene. Only the complaining rain lent its monotonous accompaniment to Mignon’s sobs.
“Let us go back to your house, Mignon,” proposed Marjorie practically with a view toward bracing up the weeper. “Someone is likely to come along and see us. You will go, won’t you?”
“Yes,” came the husky reply.
“All right.” Making an effort to speak with the utmost cheerfulness, Marjorie loosed her hold on Mignon and picked up the suitcase. “I’ll carry it,” she said. “It’s only a little way to your home. But first, I must stop at that little house over there and tell Captain to wait for me longer. I’d like to have a talk with you and you know I am to see your father. Is he at home?”
“Yes. In the library. I left the house by the back entrance so that he wouldn’t see me. I hid my suitcase outside,” confessed Mignon in a low, shamed voice. “I was going to New York to see Rowena. She promised to help me get on the stage. Her uncle is a theatrical manager.”
“I’m glad you have changed your mind,” was the hearty assertion. Marjorie was thinking that she was not in the least surprised to learn that Rowena Farnham was at the root of Mignon’s flight.
“I would never have hidden the money if it hadn’t been for her,” Mignon continued bitterly. “Still, it’s my fault, after all. I shouldn’t have listened to her. But this is the end. I’m going to be different, even if my father sends me away to school. I guess I started wrong and somehow could never do right. I deserve to be punished, though. It just breaks my heart when I think of not graduating from Sanford High.”
Marjorie listened in wonder. Was it really lawless Mignon who had just spoken so penitently? Could it be that her better self had at last found the light? “You are going to graduate from Sanford High,” she declared staunchly. “We must go to your father and tell him everything. I’m sure he’ll understand.”
Mignon sighed at the prospect ahead of her, yet she made no dissent to Marjorie’s plan. She had small faith in her father’s clemency, but she had at last taken a step in the right direction and she was resolved to go on. “We might as well go to the front door and ring the bell,” she said dejectedly. “I know he’ll be terribly angry, but I’ll have to stand it.”
Mignon’s prediction of her father’s anger was not an idle one. Of the excitable Latin temperament, his indignation flamed high when the two girls entered the library where he sat quietly reading and Mignon haltingly confessed to him the details of her interrupted flight. His scathing words of rebuke brought on a second flood of tears. Mignon crumpled up in a big chair, a figure of abject misery. It was then that Marjorie took the floor and in her sweet, gracious fashion earnestly pleaded clemency for the weeper.