Mrs Willis turned away from these unpleasant whispers—she would not let them stay with her, and turned a deaf ear to their ugly words. She had publicly declared in the school her belief in Annie’s absolute innocence, but at the moment when her pupil looked up at her with a world of love and adoration in her gaze, she found to her own infinite distress that she could not give her the old love.
Annie went back to her companions, and bent her head over her lessons, and tried to believe that she was very thankful and very happy, and Cecil Temple managed to whisper a gentle word of congratulation to her, and at the twelve o’clock walk Annie perceived that a few of her school-fellows looked at her with friendly eyes again. She perceived now that when she went into the play-room she was not absolutely tabooed, and that, if she chose, she might speedily resume her old reign of popularity. Annie had, to a remarkable extent, the gift of inspiring love, and her old favourites would quickly have flocked back to their sovereign had she so willed it. It is certainly true that the girls to whom the whole story was known in all its bearings found it difficult to understand how Annie could be innocent; but Mr Everard’s and Mrs Willis’s assertions were too potent to be disregarded, and most of the girls were only too willing to let the whole affair slide from their minds, and to take back their favourite Annie to their hearts again.
Annie, however, herself did not so will it. In the play-room she fraternised with the little ones who were alike her friends in adversity and sunshine; she rejected the overtures of her old favourites, but played, and romped, and was merry with the children of the sixth class. She even declined Cecil’s invitation to come and sit with her in her drawing-room.
“Oh, no,” she said, “I hate being still; I am in no humour for a talk. Another time, Cecil, another time. Now then, Sybil, my beauty, get well on my back, and I’ll be the willing dog carrying you round and round the room.”
Annie’s face had not a trace of care or anxiety on it, but her eyes would not quite meet Cecil’s, and Cecil sighed as she turned away, and her heart, too, began to whisper little, mocking, ugly doubts of poor Annie.
During the half-hour before tea that evening Annie was sitting on the floor with a small child in her lap, and two other little ones tumbling about her, when she was startled by a shower of lollipops being poured over her head, down her neck, and into her lap. She started up and met the sleepy gaze of Susan Drummond.
“That’s to congratulate you, Miss,” said Susan; “you’re a very lucky girl to have escaped as you did.”
The little ones began putting Susan’s lollipops vigorously into their mouths. Annie sprang to her feet, shaking the sticky sweetmeats out of her dress on to the floor.
“What have I escaped from?” she asked, turning round and facing her companion haughtily.
“Oh, dear me!” said Susan, stepping back a pace or two. “I—ah—” stifling a yawn—“I only meant you were very near getting into an ugly scrape. It’s no affair of mine, I’m sure; only I thought you’d like the lollipops.”