Then, without giving any reason for her request, she asked Cena North to borrow Daisy’s blotter and forget to return it; instead, to give it to her—Jan—after school.
Cena was ready to do anything that Jan asked of her. She admired fearless “Miss Lochinvar” with all the might of her own quiet nature.
Not for nothing had Jan read stories in which looking-glasses had disclosed the secrets of blotters. Locking her door on her arrival in her own room, putting a chair before it in case the impossible should happen and some one should open it, pulling down the shade to the extreme annoyance of Tommy Traddles, sitting on the window-sill, and lighting the gas, this solitary conspirator held the blotter before her mirror.
She nearly fell over in the joyful shock of the revelations thus obtained. Only a word here and there, but they were enough. Though Jan knew nothing of the contents of the letter which had fallen by deliberate apparent chance into Miss Larned’s hands, she saw that these words must be part of it, preserved by the faithful blotter to incriminate the girl who had betrayed her friend, and fought her, not fairly, but treacherously, for precedence.
With the blotter and the sheet of paper she held in her hands the proofs which should reinstate Gladys on the morrow. Now it was time to take Gwen into her confidence, and she turned down the gas, drew up the shade, removed her superfluous barrier, and thrust an excited, flushed face out of the door.
“Gwen, Gwen, come here!” she called, and Gwen flew out of her room, knowing from the tremulous voice, strained and unnatural in tone, that something had happened.
CHAPTER XII
“’TWERE BETTER BY FAR TO HAVE MATCHED OUR FAIR COUSIN WITH YOUNG LOCHINVAR”
Gwen and Jan held a council of war. But it was a long time before they reached the council. It took so long to tell the history of the campaign which “Miss Lochinvar”—worthy of her name—had been waging, single-handed and alone, in her cousin’s behalf. It was a story full of “I thoughts,” and “I saids,” and “she saids”; of “I founds,” and “I heards,” and “she dids.” Gwen could not sit still to listen, but walked up and down the room, eyes flashing and cheeks burning, till Tommy Traddles—sensitive, like all cats, to perturbation in the air about him—jumped up on the top of the bookcase, and watched her with large, disapproving eyes, doubtless thinking that people who did not belong to the feline family were most foolishly excitable over trifles.
The result of the girls’ consultation—when they reached that point—was that Gwen and Jan left home early on the following morning together, and when Gladys followed later she was met at the door by Miss Larned’s maid, requesting her immediate attendance in that personage’s private room.