"I don't believe I shall," said Bridget, with a comical expression. She bent over her books as she spoke, and Miss Dent, feeling puzzled, she did not know why, left the room.
A moment later Janet came in.
"What is the matter?" asked Janet. "I have just met Miss Dent, who tells me that you failed in your three English lessons this morning. How can that be? Your grammar and English history and geography were perfect last night. They had not a single mistake!"
"You mean," said Bridget, raising her eyes and looking full at, Janet, "that your grammar and geography and English history were perfect last night."
Janet shrugged her shoulders.
"It's all the same," she said. "I told you that I'd help you with your lessons, and I shall keep my word. How is it that you have managed to get into disgrace, after all the trouble I have taken for you?"
"You are never to take it again, Janet; that is all!"
"Never to take it again! Dear me, what a very superior voice we can use when we like! And has our 'first' sweet little 'gem of the ocean' discovered that her own mighty genius can tide her over all school troubles?"
"I'm not going to be afraid of you, Janet," said Biddy. "Of course, you've been awfully kind to me, and I'm not ungrateful. But something—something happened last night which made me see that I've been a mean, horrid, deceitful girl to let you help me at all, and you are not to do it again; that's all."