The girls were bubbling with delight over their walk—the bugs, the birds, and even a snake, had been watched and admired.
"Didn't Nita come back yet?" asked Zan, after a short interval, and no sign of the girl was to be seen.
"Oh, yes, Nita and I have had a long talk and we are going to be the best of pals after this," replied Miss Miller. But her tone gave the girls to understand that not a word of the girl's escapade would ever be mentioned again.
Nita returned and took the dirty letter to the Guide's tent, leaving it on the cot.
Later in the afternoon, Miss Miller took the letter and read it with deepest pity for the girl.
"To think that she read this! No wonder the girl cried that day!"
The letter said that Mrs. Brampton had had her whole life filled with worry and disappointment over her only child's waywardness. That she intended trying a different method of training. She knew how Nita continually lied to her, and that the past year she feared that she was actually meeting young men slyly when she should be visiting friends, or at home practising music and studying school lessons.
Mrs. Brampton said she herself had so many social engagements to keep that she could not be expected to stay home to watch a wayward daughter. But she had at last decided to do something her dearest friend had suggested. Nita would be sent to a reform school—a very select and expensive place, but a reform school, all the same. Of course, she would have to meet other girls there, perhaps much worse than she, but at least Mrs. Brampton would not have to bother about her child's running about the streets.
As long as Miss Miller kept Nita on the farm, it would be all right, as far as she (the mother) was concerned, but the moment Nita was sent home, she would be packed off to a safe place.
"No wonder the poor child displays the weaknesses she does. It is our duty to train her for a better life than the one her mother can aspire to. I think I would have buried this letter, too, had I been the daughter of such a mother!"