“I said this, sir. I said, ‘Yes, Mrs Willis, I did draw that caricature. You will scarcely understand how I, who love you so much, could have been so mad and ungrateful as to do anything to turn you into ridicule. I would cut off my right hand now not to have done it; but I did do it, and I must tell you the truth.’ ‘Tell me, dear,’ she said, quite gently then. ‘It was one wet afternoon about a fortnight ago,’ I said to her; ‘a lot of us middle-school-girls were sitting together, and I had a pencil and some bits of paper, and I was making up funny little groups of a lot of us, and the girls were screaming with laughter, for somehow I managed to make the likeness that I wanted in each case.’ It was very wrong of me, I know. It was against the rules; but I was in one of my maddest humours, and I really do not care what the consequences were. At last one of the girls said: ‘You won’t dare to make a picture like that of Mrs Willis, Annie—you know you won’t dare.’ The minute she said that name I began to feel ashamed. I remembered I was breaking one of the rules, and I suddenly tore up all my bits of paper and flung them into the fire, and I said, ‘No, I would not dare to show her dishonour.’ Well, afterwards, as I was washing my hands for tea up in my room, the temptation came over me so strongly that I felt I could not resist it, to make a funny little sketch of Mrs Willis. I had a little scrap of thin paper, and I took out my pencil and did it all in a minute. It seemed to me very funny, and I could not help laughing at it; and then I thrust it into my private writing-case, which I always keep locked, and I put the key in my pocket and ran downstairs. I forgot all about the caricature. I had never shown it to anyone. How it got into Cecil’s book is more than I can say. When I had finished speaking Mrs Willis looked very hard at the book. ‘You are right,’ she said; ‘this caricature is drawn on a very thin piece of paper, which has been cleverly pasted on the title-page.’ Then, Mr Everard, she asked me a lot of questions. Had I ever parted with my keys? Had I ever left my desk unlocked? ‘No,’ I said, ‘my desk is always locked, and my keys are always in my pocket. Indeed,’ I added, ‘my keys were absolutely safe for the last week, for they went in a white petticoat to the wash, and came back as rusty as possible.’ I could not open my desk for a whole week, which was a great nuisance. I told all this story to Mrs Willis, and she said to me, ‘You are positively certain that this caricature has been taken out of your desk by somebody else, and pasted in here? You are sure that the caricature you drew is not to be found in your desk?’ ‘Yes,’ I said; ‘how can I be anything but sure; these are my pencil marks, and that is the funny little turn I gave to your neck which made me laugh when I drew it. Yes; I am certainly sure.’
”‘I have always been told, Annie,’ Mrs Willis said, ‘that you are the only girl in the school who can draw these caricatures. You have never seen an attempt at this kind of drawing amongst your school-fellows, or amongst any of the teachers?’
”‘I have never seen any of them try this special kind of drawing,’ I said. ‘I wish I was like them. I wish I had never, never done it.’
”‘You have got your keys now?’ Mrs Willis said.
”‘Yes,’ I answered, pulling them all covered with rust out of my pocket.
“Then she told me to leave the keys on the table, and to go upstairs and fetch down my little private desk.
“I did so, and she made me put the rusty key in the lock and open the desk, and together we searched through its contents. We pulled out everything, or rather I did, and I scattered all my possessions about on the table, and then I looked up almost triumphantly at Mrs Willis.
”‘You see the caricature is not here,’ I said, ‘somebody picked the lock and took it away.’
”‘This lock has not been picked,’ Mrs Willis said, ‘and what is that little piece of white paper sticking out of the private drawer?’
”‘Oh, I forgot my private drawer,’ I said; ‘but there is nothing in it—nothing whatever,’ and then I touched the spring, and pulled it open, and there lay the little caricature which I had drawn in the bottom of the drawer. There it lay, not as I had left it, for I had never put it into the private drawer. I saw Mrs Willis’s face turn very white, and I noticed that her hands trembled. I was all red myself, and very hot, and there was a choking lump in my throat, and I could not have got a single word out even if I had wished to. So I began scrambling the things back into my desk, as hard as ever I could, and then I locked it, and put the rusty keys back in my pocket.