“No,” replied Susie; “how could we? St. Cecilia, if you think you have been playing the spy, we will punish you by making you sing for us to-night.”
Here Susie linked her hand lovingly through Miss Symes’s arm. Miss Symes bent and kissed the girl’s eager face.
“I will sing for you with pleasure, dear, if I have a moment of time to spare. But now I have come to fetch Fanny. I want to have a little talk with her all by herself. Fan, will you come with me?”
Fanny Crawford raised her pretty, dark eyebrows in some surprise. What could this portend? There was a sort of code of honor at the school that the girls were never to be disturbed by the teachers during the half-holiday hours.
“Come, Fanny,” said Miss Symes; and the two walked away in another direction for some little distance.
The day was a glorious one towards the end of September. Miss Symes chose an open bench in a part of the grounds where the forest land was more or less cleared away. She invited Fanny to seat herself, and took a place by her side.
“Now, my dear,” she said, “I have a piece of news for you which will, I think, please you very much.”
“Oh, what can please me when father is going?” said Fanny, her eyes filling with tears.
“Nevertheless, this may. You have, of course, heard of—indeed, I have been given to understand that you know—your cousins, the Vivians?”