Isabelle, somewhat dazed, walked back to the schoolroom. She grasped the idea that this time she had exceeded her limit. She had never seen her mother so angry, and even Wally was as grave as a judge.
“Why is it wicked for me to play Indian with the boys?” she demanded of Miss Watts.
“It isn’t playing Indian; it’s—little girls can’t spend the night in the woods with boys,” she replied.
“But why not? They were my regular friends.”
“Didn’t your mother tell you why it is wrong?”
“No.”
“Then I must speak to her, Isabelle, before we discuss it.”
It was only the beginning of the revelation of her ignominy. She was not allowed to go anywhere or to see her friends. Once when she saw Margie Hunter on the road, and waved to her, Margie looked the other way and did not wave back. She smuggled off a letter to Herbert and he smuggled one to say that he was not allowed to see her, or write to her—that he was being sent away to school.
When she questioned Miss Watts she met with pained reticence—no frank explanation. The girl felt that she was a prisoner, under sentence for something which she could not understand. She turned hither and thither in her appeal for help and understanding, and everybody turned aside as if she were an outcast. The iron of injustice began to enter her soul. She was at the impressionable age, when she felt deeply every injury done her. She thought much of Ann Barnes and Martin Christiansen, her two friends. They would have understood. They would have answered the questions, told her the truth which her mother hinted at yet failed to explain. It was a period of bitterness and revolt, of enforced inaction and isolation. It was to bear fruit in her whole life, and no one guessed it—or cared.
But it so happened that Christiansen, all unknown to her, was to help her. He happened to meet Mrs. Bryce, full of maternal anxiety about the school question, and he immediately suggested The Hill Top School, conducted by some friends of his who were Quakers. They accepted only a few children, but they accomplished wonders with them. Max listened and took note. He offered to write a letter in Isabelle’s behalf. Mrs. Bryce accepted this help gratefully, and in the end it was arranged that Isabelle was to be sent there. But the little girl knew nothing of this.