“No, they are both still away. Susy, I want to speak to you.”
“Dear me! what for? must you speak in the middle of the night?”
“Yes, for I don’t want anyone else to know. Oh, Susan, please don’t go to sleep.”
“My dear, I won’t, if I can help it. Do you mind throwing a little cold water over my face and head? There is a can by the bed-side. I always keep one handy. Ah, thanks—now I am wide awake. I shall probably remain so for about two minutes. Can you get your say over in that time?”
“I wonder, Susan,” said Hester, “if you have got any heart—but heart or not, I have just come here to-night to tell you that I have found you out. You are at the bottom of all this mischief about Annie Forest.”
Susan had a most phlegmatic face, an utterly unemotional voice, and she now stared calmly at Hester and demanded to know what in the world she meant.
Hester felt her temper going, her self-control deserting her. Susan’s apparent innocence and indifference drove her half frantic.
“Oh, you are mean,” she said. “You pretend to be innocent, but you are the deepest and wickedest girl in the school. I tell you, Susan, I have found you out—you put that caricature of Mrs Willis into Cecil’s book; you changed Dora’s theme. I don’t know why you did it, nor how you did it, but you are the guilty person, and you have allowed the sin of it to remain on Annie’s shoulders all this time. Oh, you are the very meanest girl I ever heard of!”
“Dear, dear!” said Susan, “I wish I had not asked you to throw cold water over my head and face, and allow myself to be made very wet and uncomfortable, just to be told I am the meanest girl you ever met. And pray what affair is this of yours? You certainly don’t love Annie Forest.”
“I don’t, but I want justice to be done to her. Annie is very, very unhappy. Oh, Susy, won’t you go and tell Mrs Willis the truth?”