“Let’s ask Miss Olaine.”
“I wouldn’t dare! You wouldn’t dare yourself, Tavia?”
“No—o. I guess I wouldn’t. She—she’s so different from the other teachers. I feel just as though she’d slap me!”
“Wait a minute!” exclaimed Dorothy, thinking hard. “Something Mrs. Pangborn said to me—I remember.”
“What about? What’s Mrs. Pangborn got to do with the mystery?”
“She hinted that there had been something in Miss Olaine’s life that excused her harshness—something that if we girls knew it would make us forgive her irritability.”
“What is it?” asked the curious Tavia.
“I don’t know. I haven’t the least idea. Mrs. Pangborn intimated that she had no right to tell us.”
“Why, I think that’s puzzling,” admitted Tavia. “But I can’t work up much sympathy for Olaine on that showing. I want details.”
“And I want details of Tom Moran’s mix-up with the Rector Street School fire. Oh, Tavia!”