No answer. “Girls!” repeated the teacher. “Miss Dale! Miss Octavia!”
“Yes, ma’am!” drawled Tavia, yawning prodigiously. “Yes, ma’am!”
“You need not tell me you were asleep,” snapped the teacher. “Where is the key to this door?”
Tavia had removed the key from the lock and now held it up for Dorothy to see. Then she laid it on the window sill before she answered:
“I’m sure, Miss Olaine, I haven’t the key. You locked us in——”
“And I left the key in the door, Miss Impertinence,” interposed the teacher.
“If the key was on the outside and we are on the inside,” said Tavia, calmly, “of course you do not accuse us of appropriating it, Miss Olaine?”
“Somebody has been here, Miss. I demand to know who it was.”
“I can tell you truthfully, Miss Olaine,” said Tavia, still calmly, “that I have seen nobody at the door.”
“Miss Dale, where is the key?”