"Where are Marcia's things?" demanded Joan.
A glance around the room showed it empty of all that had belonged to Marcia. The girls looked at each other. Kathy was the first to speak.
"We must find Marcia, girls—if she is to be found—and ask her if the lamp was in the room when she left it."
A hasty but thorough search established the certainty that Marcia was not in any of the buildings. Neither, apparently, was the lamp. It was almost supper time when the girls came together again to report failure.
"What do you think?" Alison asked.
Joan, as usual, was the spokeswoman. "It looks to me as if she wanted to go away, and has taken the lamp to sell it in order to get the money for her ticket. She could not sell jewelry, of course, but a handsome lamp might bring a good price. She has looked even more forbidding than usual the last few days, and I know she hated school. She put back the other things she 'borrowed,' and tried to throw the blame on Rosalind by hiding them in her drawer. She knew Rosy was in Kathy's room with us, and she had a clear field. So she carried out her plans, and ran away."
"Well," said Kathy after a pause. "If Joan is right, we ought to report Marcia's disappearance at once. If she has really run away from school, Miss Harland will have to know it."