Neither Miss McMurtry nor Esther spoke, but Nan was not to be so appeased.
"I am sure you are very kind to give me this opportunity to put your old money back," she answered bitterly, "but as I did not take it I should find that pretty difficult. I didn't even know you had any money, although I confess I did look into your trunk when perhaps I ought to have asked permission and I did take out an old blouse, but I was sorry the next minute and put it back again. But I expect I might as well have kept it and anything else I could lay my hands on. It is the old story, if a girl does a wrong thing once no one ever believes in her when she tries to be straight again. I suppose you will be telling your suspicion to Polly O'Neill and the other girls so they won't let me stay any longer in camp. I don't care, I am innocent!" Nan's voice rose to a shrill cry of protest, but in spite of this there was a note of sincerity in it that almost convinced Betty, although unfortunately the effect was not the same upon Miss McMurtry and Esther.
"No one shall say anything against you, Nan, nor spread this story in any possible way until more is found out," Miss McMurtry now remarked, briefly dismissing them.
CHAPTER XVIII
ONE WAY TO FIND OUT
Nevertheless within a few days the story had been circulated about the camp. Not a word, however, had been spoken concerning it by Betty, Esther or Miss McMurtry, but poor Nan Graham had betrayed herself. For in her effort to gain sympathizers, unfortunately a wider suspicion was aroused.
Sore and unhappy over what she insisted was a totally unjust supposition, it was but natural that she should turn to another girl for consolation. Not to Polly, however; Nan said not a word to her, for Polly had given no evidence of having heard of her ill-timed visit to Betty's trunk, having been on her way to the village at the time the offence was committed, and above everything Nan desired to remain fixed in Polly's good graces. No, she confided the account of her interview first to Beatrice Field, making so tragic a tale of it that Bee, who was quite young and only a mischievous tomboy in her disposition and never having heard anything of Nan's past mistakes, was deeply indignant.
"A Camp Fire girl accused of stealing, well not exactly accused but suspected!" Honestly Bee had never conceived of anything so dreadful, and so straightway put the whole case before her sister, Juliet. Then to her surprise Juliet, who was a far more worldly wise person, did not accept the story from the same point of view, indeed Juliet became immediately indignant for Betty's sake, declaring that she was being a martyr in not spreading the news of her loss abroad and at least endeavoring to recover her lost property.
Something of Juliet's impression must have crept into Bee, for in her next conversation with Nan there was a certain cooling off in sympathy that made Nan feel the need of another partisan. This time she was more unwise in selecting Edith Norton, for Edith had always particularly disliked Nan's presence in the Sunrise Camp and, even while hearing her side of the story, had unhesitatingly revealed not only a want of pity for her but a plain lack of faith.