"But perhaps Bessie was just ahead, and Miss Stephens did see her," put in Hope.
"And didn't take her for granted," scoffed Kate. Then, as she caught a look that her brother and Peter exchanged, she cried,—
"What is it? Peter!" bringing one little skate-clad foot down on the ice with an emphasis that sent out a shower of sparkles, "tell me instantly what you know. Don't you see, you two boys, that it's for the credit of the school,—of dear Miss Marr, of Dorothea (silly goose that she is), and all the rest of us,—that this kind of thing shall be nipped in the bud? Don't you see that you ought to tell what you know, that some of us can stop the foolishness, and save Dorothea from being sent home?"
"Come now, you don't mean that;" and Peter stopped short in that odd way of his.
"Yes, I do mean that Miss Marr would send Dorothea straight home if she heard of her going off for a lark with Raymond Armitage. She says at the start that her school is neither an infant school nor a reform school, and if she finds that girls of fifteen and sixteen don't know how to behave like ladies in the ordinary ways of good manners, they are not the kind of girls she wants in her house, and so she sends them out of it. There isn't any nagging or any little punishments. She advises us and talks to us in a nice friendly way at the beginning, and sometimes later; but she lets a girl alone enough to find out just what she is, and then, when she finds out that the girl has faults and habits that may injure the other girls, she won't have her in her school; and so now I want you to tell us—Hope and me—what you know about this going off with Raymond Armitage, so that—"
"You may go and tell Miss Marr, and have her pack the girl off home."
"Schuyler!"
"Oh, well, I didn't mean exactly that, of course; but what do you propose to do?"
"Stop the foolishness, whatever it is, that may be going on."
"Well, after what you told me the other day of your undertaking in that line with this particular party, I shouldn't think you'd attempt anything further with her."