But before she had had many minutes of anxiety the two girls came running up to the porch. They were laughing happily now, and in quite a different mood from that in which they had left the house earlier in the evening.
"What in the world have you been doing, children?" asked Grandmother Emerson. "Your dresses are covered with dirt."
"Mother knows."
"Aunt Marion can guess."
"I'm sure I don't and I can't. What have you been up to?"
"It's all right about our ticket," nodded Ethel Brown gleefully.
"How can that be?"
"We were so worried about the punching coming out wrong that as soon as we left the Amphitheatre we ran up to that hole in the fence and crawled out again, and then we ran down the road as fast as we could to the trolley gate and came in properly, so now our tickets punch all right."
"But there's still a hurt in my girls' consciences, isn't there?" asked Mrs. Morton, drawing them to her and kissing them "Good-night."
"You see," she went on, "when you broke a law of the Institution you were not law-abiding citizens."