After what seemed a really interminable time, the girls streamed out once more into the garden. It was the custom after every meal in good weather. Honor, breathless with eagerness, led the way, beckoning the others to follow. They flocked to the seat under the great trumpet vine.
“What is it?” they all cried. “More tells, Moriole? We haven’t heard half enough!”
“Sit down, girls! I’m out of breath. I want to tell you all—you first, Patricia, but all together—you are all wrong about Maria. Poor thing, she meant no harm. Listen!” and she poured out Maria’s story, the words tumbling over one another with eagerness; the girls listening with wide-open eyes.
“So you see,” she concluded, “it wasn’t wicked, it was only silly; very silly, of course, and she knows it, and is—oh, so dreadfully sorry and ashamed! Pat, you can’t be angry with her any more; you must forgive her, and take her back, don’t you see?”
Patricia laughed. “I’m afraid I don’t see!” she said. “Stealing is stealing, Moriole, my child! No doubt she is sorry. Thieves are apt to be—when they are found out. They are also apt to trump up a pretty story to tell to sympathetic people. This is a very pretty story, my dear, but I don’t see that it alters the facts of the case. The ring was in Maria’s pocket. Et voilà!”
“You—you mean—that you do not believe what Maria says?”
Honor spoke slowly, as if bewildered.
“I mean precisely that! I don’t believe one solitary word!”
Honor looked from one to another.
“Girls! Vivette! Stephanie! You believe it?”