The translation, after Marion had puzzled it out and written it down in legible English, was:
“Dear Edna: Madame Belotti says she will not come to the back gate unless you will bring Elfie too. She says she can find some buried money by putting a divining-rod in a blonde child’s hand. That is what she is wanted for. Get her away from Marion and Candace and bring her along; no one will ever know.
“Addie Mason.”
“That’s what you get for meddling, miss,” Marion said to herself, as, having made the copies and torn them up, she refolded the boat and applied herself again to the stockings and the Roman emperors.
“Caligula, Claudius, Nero,” she continued, not conscious she was speaking aloud. “I do hope she wont do it. Galba, Otho, Vitellius. O, dear, I do hope she wont.”
“Wont what, you funny old thing?” asked Lily, looking in at the door.
For a moment Marion was tempted to tell her about the note she had read and beg her to prevent Edna’s taking Elfie outside of the gate, but she knew her interference might be resented, and Lily was so intolerant of tale-telling that she did not want to seem guilty of it; so she parried the question and begged her to take the list she had copied from her history and see if she could say the Roman emperors correctly.
“Perfect,” said Lily, when she had done; “but you always do say every thing perfectly. And now tell me what is bothering you, Molly Ann. You looked when I came in as though you had the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
But no coaxing would persuade the girl to tell, although she longed to talk about her discovery with some one. Of course she could not tell Mrs. Abbott. The school-girls’ code of honor forbade that; but she resolved to watch Elfie closely and prevent her, if possible, from being taken out of the gate, and if she could not do that to follow her herself, no matter how much her doing so might offend the girls.