"Who gave you that letter, Kitty?"
And poor Kitty, looking piteously at Deleah, lied—futilely, but for the sake of her friend—and said she did not know.
"Was it a gentleman?"
Kitty, confounded and demoralised, stammered out that she had forgotten.
Deleah came to her rescue. Deleah, who knew well that her hour had come: "It is from Mr. Reginald Forcus," she said. She had received warnings on the subject of Reginald Forcus before.
"And what has that gentleman to write to you of such immediate importance that it must cause an interruption to class?" Miss Chaplin with head in air demanded.
And Deleah looking at the note in its envelope, said she did not know.
"Open it, and see," Miss Chaplin naturally recommended.
When Deleah hesitated to comply, the schoolmistress held out her hand, but
Deleah, choosing to disregard that gesture, put the letter in her pocket.
The elder lady threw her thin lips into a tight line across her narrow face. She really thought it immoral for a girl to receive a letter from a gentleman, she really felt that the high tone of her school was endangered by that flagrant breach of manners made by Deleah Day. She had to punish iniquity, she had to protect from the evil effects of pernicious example, the unsullied young under her care.