Annie’s pale face flushed slightly at Susan’s words.
“Why should we try to conceal the thing?” she said, speaking with sudden energy, and a look of hope and animation coming back to her face. “Susy, let’s go, all of us, and tell the miserable truth to Mrs Willis; it will be much the best way. We did not do the other thing, and when we have confessed about this our hearts will be at rest.”
“No, we did not do the other thing,” said Susan, a queer grey colour coming over her face; “but confess about this, Annie Forest!—I think you are mad. You dare not tell.”
“All right,” said Annie, “I won’t, unless you all agree to it,” and then she continued her walk, leaving Susan standing on the gravelled path with her hands clasped together, and a look of most genuine alarm and dismay on her usually phlegmatic face.
Susan quickly found Phyllis and Nora, and it was only too easy to arouse the fears of these timid little people. Their poor little faces became almost pallid, and they were not a little startled at the fact of Annie Forest, their own arch-conspirator, wishing to betray their secret.
“Oh,” said Susan Drummond, “she’s not out and out shabby; she says she won’t tell unless we all wish it. But what is to become of the basket?”
“Come, come, young ladies; no whispering, if you please,” said Miss Good, who came up at this moment. “Susan, you are looking pale and cold, walk up and down that path half-a-dozen times, and then go into the house. Phyllis and Nora, you can come with me as far as the lodge. I want to take a message from Mrs Willis to Mary Martin about the fowl for to-morrow’s dinner.”
Phyllis and Nora, with dismayed faces, waited solemnly away with the English teacher, and Susan was left to her solitary meditations.
Things had come to such a pass that her slow wits were brought into play, and she neither felt sleepy, nor did she indulge in her usual habit of eating lollipops.
That basket might be discovered any day, and then—then disgrace was imminent. Susan could not make out what had become of old Betty; never before had she so utterly failed them.