"If Ruth tells! What do you mean?"
"They are going to do their utmost to get her to tell; and if she does tell they will call out our names and expel us, that's all. Oh! I can't bear to think of it—I can't bear to think of it."
Susy's voice broke. Tears trembled in her bright black eyes, and she turned her head to one side. Kathleen gave her a quick glance.
"It will be all right," she said. "Ruth won't tell. Ruth is the kind who never tells. She told me to-day she wouldn't."
"She'll be a brick if she doesn't," said Kate Rourke. "But then, of course, you know—"
"I know what?"
"Oh, nothing. What's the good of making ourselves melancholy on a night like this?"
"If I were expelled," said Clara Sawyer, "I should leave Merrifield. I could never lift up my head again. You can't think what impudent sort of boys my brothers are, and they have always twitted me for my good fortune in getting into the Great Shirley School. They say that if we are to be expelled it will be done in public. The governors are determined to read us a lesson. That's what they say."
"Who cares what they say?" said Kathleen. "Let them say."
"Well, that's what I think; and I dare say half of it is untrue," said little Janey Ford.