“You’ll never play any more tricks on these girls,” said Mr Everard, rising to his feet, and suddenly filling the room and reducing Susan to an abject silence by the ring of his stern, deep voice. “I take it upon me, in the absence of your mistress, to pronounce your punishment. You leave Lavender House in disgrace this evening. Miss Good will take you home, and explain to your parents the cause of your dismissal. You are not to see any of your school-fellows again. Your meanness, your cowardice, your sin require no words on my part to deepen their vileness. Through pure wantonness you have cast a cruel shadow on an innocent young life. If that girl dies, you indeed are not blameless in the cause of her early removal, for through you her heart and spirit were broken. Miss Drummond, I pray God you may at least repent and be sorry. There are some people mentioned in the Bible who are spoken of as past feeling. Wretched girl, while there is yet time, pray that you may not belong to them. Now I must leave you, but I shall lock you in. Miss Good will come for you in about an hour to take you away.”
Susan Drummond sank down on the nearest seat, and began to cry softly; one or two pin-pricks from Mr Everard’s stern words may possibly have reached her shallow heart—no one can tell. She left Lavender House that evening, and none of the girls who had lived with her as their school-mate heard of her again.
Chapter Fifty.
The Heart Of Little Nan.
For several days now Annie had lain unconscious in Mrs Williams’s little bedroom; the kind-hearted woman could not find it in her heart to send the sick child away. Her husband and the neighbours expostulated with her, and said that Annie was only a poor little waif.
“She has no call on you,” said Jane Allen, a hard-featured woman who lived next door. “Why should you put yourself out just for a sick lass? and she’ll be much better on in the workhouse infirmary.”
But Mrs Williams shook her head at her hard-featured and hard-hearted neighbour, and resisted her husband’s entreaties.
“Eh!” she said, “but the poor lamb needs a good bit of mothering, and I misdoubt me she wouldn’t get much of that in the infirmary.”