"Why should my examination be cancelled?" repeated Alma, dazedly. "Was anyone else's cancelled too?"
"No. One, two, six girls flunked—and—for goodness' sake—Mildred Lloyd made the highest mark, Ninety-three! Mildred Lloyd, come here, and get your medal! Congratulations!"
Mildred strolled up nonchalantly, glanced at the board and turned away; only Nancy followed her curiously with her eyes. Then she turned to Alma.
"Haven't you any idea why your examination was cancelled?" she asked, in an odd voice that sounded as if her throat was dry. Alma shook her head.
"It's very strange. Come and let's ask Miss Drinkwater. Maybe it's only that your paper was lost or something like that." She tried to sound comforting, but she had no faith in her suggestion. Just then, however, the bell rang, and the girls had to go to their desks. Miss Leland took her place at one end of the room and stood waiting for silence. Everyone felt that she was there to make some important announcement and her grave, cold expression led all of them to suspect that it was not an entirely pleasant one.
She waited a moment after the room was silent. Alma looked piteously at Nancy, with a glance that said, "She's going to say something about me." Nancy kept her eyes fixedly on Miss Leland. Her lips were pressed together tightly, and her hands had grown as cold and damp as though she had just taken them out of ice-water. Her heart was beating so heavily that the frill on her shirt-waist trembled.
Miss Leland took a step forward, straightened a book on the big desk, and then looked up.
"Girls, for the first time in the history of this school, I am compelled to make an announcement that is as great a humiliation to me as it must be to you," she said, in a quiet, even voice.
"Ever since this school was founded there has never until now been any occasion when I have been forced to doubt the honor of one of my pupils." She made another pause, and in that silence an electric thrill seemed to pass through each one of the girls; some of them flushed scarlet and others went white, as though each one felt in a hazy way some share in the guilt of the unnamed culprit.
"For the first time in eighteen years one of my teachers has had to bring to my attention the fact that a pupil of this school attempted to cheat in an examination. That examination has, of course, been cancelled, so that that girl's attempt to win a high mark, dishonestly, availed her nothing.