"Wish us good luck, anyway," Sadie said, as she and Nan prepared to answer the summons. "We may not come up alive!"
But in Miss Romaine's office the two girls found a very different spectacle from the one they had expected.
Miss Romaine was sitting behind her desk and there was an unusual gravity on her handsome face.
Kate was there, looking subdued and sullen. Jessie Robinson and Doris Maybel were standing beside the desk. But what surprised Nan and Sadie most was the sight of Lottie Sparks cowering in one of the mahogany chairs, dissolved in tears.
Miss Romaine greeted the newcomers and motioned them to her.
"I have investigated the charge brought against you by Lottie Sparks," she said quietly. "I thought it best to do so before sending for you girls at all. There are many witnesses—in fact, almost all the girls in the school," she added, with a slight smile, "who are not only willing but eager to testify in your behalf. These were eye witnesses, and they declare that you had nothing to do with Lottie's mishap. That she slipped and fell in the lake herself."
"But they were chasing me! They made me fall in," cried Lottie, through her tears.
"And why?" cried Miss Romaine, so sternly that even Sadie and Nan stepped back from her and Lottie actually trembled, cowering back in her chair. "Because you made a contemptible—a wicked—accusation which you have also confessed to me was false! I will not repeat it here for the sake of Sadie Appleby whom I know to be an honest, upright girl.
"And now," the teacher added briskly, "I want you to apologize to Sadie, and to Nan Harrison also for implicating her in your charge. Come, Lottie," as the latter made no move to obey. "I am waiting!"
There was a ring in the last words that compelled obedience.