'How? What do you mean?' inquired Miss Upjohn in surprise.
'I mean, if you did not put them there yourself some one must have meddled with them, and it looks to me as if that some one had taken them away to look at, and then hurriedly put them back as near the door as she could get,' explained Miss Briggs.
'Oh I don't think it at all likely! I hope not; I should be sorry to think there was a girl in my school who would do such a thing!' she cried.
'Then how do you account for them being removed?' demanded Miss Briggs.
'I can't account for it; but I would rather think that I put them there myself in an absent-minded moment than that they had been tampered with.'
'But you are never absent-minded, and you do not forget things,' objected Miss Briggs.
'I may have forgotten this; let us hope so,' said the head-mistress in a tone which showed Miss Briggs she wished to change the conversation.
Miss Briggs took the hint and said no more, and it is just possible that the matter might have dropped, and that a suspicion which had arisen in her mind might have died out, but for another unfortunate coincidence, which was as follows.
Vava, as has been said, had not learned to be subject to discipline, and constantly talked when going to and from class; and now, after the bell was rung, she observed to Doreen, 'I don't care if I have missed the history. I shall be first in the Scripture examination—you see if I am not. I can answer any of the questions they put.'
Vava took no heed of where she was when she spoke, and never noticed that she was passing Miss Upjohn's room, until Doreen said, 'Hush!'