“But why didn’t you tell me who was at fault?”
The girls all chorused a gasp of dismay. Dorothy actually turned pale with anger.
“To tell on another girl?” she cried. “We don’t do things like that in Glenwood Hall, Miss Olaine.”
“You are saucy, Miss!” declared the teacher. “Let me tell you that Mrs. Pangborn shall hear of your impudence when she returns. As for you, Octavia—is that your name?”
“So they tell me, Miss Olaine,” returned Tavia, drawling in her speech.
“You go into this room!” commanded Miss Olaine, pointing at the door behind which the piglets had been shut. “You will find company there quite of your own kind, Miss. Come, march! I tell you, I mean to be obeyed. Go in there, Octavia.”
“Oh—of course—if you mean it,” said Tavia, lightly. “And the company of the pigs will be preferred to some I might mention.”
But this last the graceless girl was wise enough to murmur too low for the teacher to hear. She went into the closet-like room instantly. The girls at once heard the pigs begin squealing. Tavia was rescuing the pretty ribbons before Mr. Bensell should return for his five little porkers.
Miss Olaine did not speak to Dorothy again, so the latter followed the other girls out of the classroom. Cologne was saying:
“She just made a mountain out of a molehill. It wasn’t nothing—just a joke. And now she is going to tear the whole school up by the roots about it.”