He brought up the matter on Thursday morning at the conclusion of the opening exercises. Betty was quite unprepared. Tommy had told her of Meadowcroft’s coming into the Latin Composition class, and of the manner in which he had accounted for their absence. She believed, with Tommy, that the excuse had been taken in good part. She had even decided that it would also serve for other slippery Wednesdays, should such occur; and only on such Wednesdays would Mr. Meadowcroft have occasion for coming into the class. But she regretted extremely that Miss Cummings’s attention should have been called to their absence.
“There is a matter I wish to bring up before we begin work this morning,” Meadowcroft announced in his beautiful voice; and Betty shared the general anticipation of a pleasant conclusion. “It is the matter of leaving the school-grounds without permission before school is dismissed. As I understand it, the rule is that you are not to be excused from a class without a written order from parent or guardian, nor at any other time without permission from your teacher. Is it possible, Miss Pogany, that you and Miss Harrow do not understand this?”
In all her life, Betty Pogany had never been spoken to, in the way of reproof, at school; and though this was due in part to the fact that she had been Bouncing Bet so long, it was also due to good intention. And this, coming from her particular friend in the person of school-master, was the more appalling. It seemed to the girl as if the school-room were revolving round her in a cloud of blackness. She couldn’t speak, and forgetting his intention to be very gentle, Mr. Meadowcroft repeated the question sternly.
“Yes, sir,” she gasped faintly. “I mean—no, sir. I mean, I did—I understood. Mr. Appleton told me.”
“What! do you mean you deliberately broke the rule yesterday when you went home at ten minutes before two?” he demanded.
“Yes, sir,” the girl owned, looking so white and wretched that his momentary warmth became pity. It was unfair and unkind of him to turn her maternal concern for Rose into wilful wrong-doing. He only wished that about seventy of his audience were absent.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have said deliberate. It’s an ugly word,” he said very kindly. “I daresay it was only thoughtlessness and I feel sure it won’t happen again. I shall have to ask you both to learn the first paragraph of the first book of Cæsar and recite it to me at the close of school to-morrow, and that will be the end of it.”
That night Meadowcroft felt sure that Betty would drop in upon him at Mrs. Phillips’s to say what she couldn’t say before the whole school. He was greatly disappointed when the evening passed without bringing her, but felt that something at home had kept her. Sufficient snow fell to make the walking safe and not too much to make it uncomfortable, so the girls weren’t on the train next morning. But though Betty arrived at school in good time, she didn’t, as he had expected, come to him. Recess and the longer intermission at noon passed without effort towards explanation on the part of the girl. At the close of the session she and Rose presented themselves at his desk to recite the passage of Latin prose.
Rose was as gay and glib as ever as she rattled off the words like doggerel. But Betty was so white and sober that one might have believed the account of the division of Gaul was a tragedy. Meadowcroft was filled with compunction. He must have hurt her sadly, he decided, and was ready to be all kindness and perhaps even apologetic the moment she should give him an opening by vouchsafing a bare word of explanation.
But the bare word was not forthcoming. For a week thereafter he saw the girl only in the school-room. Presently it came to him that Betty was avoiding him and he was forced to conclude that she was sulky because of the reproof he had felt compelled to administer—deserved reproof. He was surprised, for he would as soon have expected Tommy to sulk as this girl whose transparent frankness he had always admired. It was almost inconceivable.