The other girls went off in different directions, all but Marion, who surprised Lily by seizing both her hands and exclaiming:
“O, dear, dear Lily, I thank you so!”
“You are extremely welcome,” Lily said, with a greatly puzzled gaze at her, “although I hardly see why you should be so grateful simply because my eloquence persuaded poor Bell into a penitential P. P. C. on Mrs. Abbott. Perhaps I wakened your conscience. Have you stolen a pie or taken a trip to the station?”
Marion laughed, but did not explain, and her heart was very light; for now Mrs. Abbott could ask Bell all the questions she wanted and learn all the particulars of the girls’ encounter with the suspicious young man.
CHAPTER XVIII.
IN VACATION.
Marion felt a little desolate as the last of the light-hearted homeward-bound crowd left the front door with faces bright with the happy prospects before them. In their own delight the girls were rather thoughtless in farewells to the lonely girl who was left. She could hardly keep back the tears as she turned away from the door and walked slowly to the empty schoolroom.
She sat down by the desk, and with her chin resting in the palm of her left hand picked up a pencil and scribbled idly on an envelope that lay at hand. She did not know what she was writing, and her thoughts were so absorbing that she did not hear the approach of a gentleman with gray hair and a black mustache, who came in through the door behind her and stood a moment watching her with his hat in his hand, till he spoke; then she started so violently that she almost fell off her chair.
“I beg your pardon,” he exclaimed, retreating a little way to give her time to recover. “I must seem impertinent, but I am so much at home in my sister’s house that I am apt to prowl around the rooms in this lawless way.”
“Then you are Mr. Eaton?” said Marion, looking up into the kind, trustworthy eyes, which returned her gaze with one as honest and frank as her own.