“Yes.”
“And how did she take it?”
“Fanny is very much upset about her father’s absence,” was Miss Symes’s unexpected answer.
Mrs. Haddo looked attentively at the English teacher. Their eyes met, but neither uttered a single word.
The next day, after school, Fanny went up to Miss Symes. “I have been thinking over everything,” she said, “and my conscience is not going to trouble me; for I know, or believe I know, a way by which I may help them all.”
“It is a grand thing to help those who are in sorrow, Fanny.”
“I will do my best,” said the girl.
That evening, to Miss Symes’s great relief, she heard Fanny’s merry laugh in the school. The girls who formed the Specialities, as they were called, had met for a cheerful conference. Mary and Julia Bertram were in the highest spirits; and Margaret Grant, with her beautiful complexion and stately ways, had never been more agreeable. Olive Repton, the pet and darling of nearly the whole of the upper school, was making the others scream with laughter.
“There can be nothing very bad,” thought Miss Symes to herself. “My dear friend will soon see that the charitable feeling which prompted her to receive those girls into the house was really but another sign of her true nobility of character.”
Meanwhile Fanny, who was told not to keep the coming of the Vivians in any way a secret, was being eagerly questioned with regard to them.