"Your answer, Margaret?" said Miss Crossland. But Peggy"s mind was so far away in the Abbey barn that she did not at once hear her.
Perhaps Emily Thompson really wished to recall Peggy"s wandering thoughts, or perhaps there was just a spice of malice in the action--at any rate, she dug the point of her lead-pencil so sharply into poor Peggy"s hand that her astonished victim sat up with a yell.
"_Margaret!_" exclaimed the outraged mistress.
"I couldn"t help it!" cried Peggy, grown desperate: "Emily hurt me so!"
"I"m very sorry, Miss Crossland," said Emily sweetly. "I didn"t mean to hurt Margaret, only to make her see you were speaking to her."
"Which would not have been necessary if she had been attending properly," replied the mistress. "And I must say I think little of any girl who cannot endure a moment"s pain in silence. Read out your answer, Emily, and I will then correct the home-work."
Peggy heaved a sigh of relief at that. She knew the sums which she had worked at home on Sat.u.r.day were correct, for Lilian had gone over them carefully afterwards, so she opened her book and took up her pencil ready to put a triumphant "R" to each of them.
"Miss Martin has borrowed my Blackie"s Arithmetic," said Miss Crossland, "so I have not the answers here. But read out your results, Bertha Muir, and I shall be able to judge from the general average whether they are correct or not."
"Three hundred and nineteen pounds six and sevenpence," read out Bertha.
"Hands up girls who have got that answer," said Miss Crossland.
At least twenty out of the thirty hands went up like lightning into the air.
"Right!" ventured the teacher.
Peggy gazed at her sum in amazement. She differed from the answer by several figures. Could both she and Lilian have made a mistake? It seemed impossible, for Lilian was so splendid at arithmetic. But Bertha was reading out the next sum, and the next. To each answer she gave a crowd of uplifted hands agreed with her, and poor Peggy found, to her chagrin, that in every case her figures were not the same. It could not be that all the ten sums she had taken so much pains over were wrong. If so, it meant a very bad mark for arithmetic.
"Oh, Miss Crossland," she burst out, "it"s not fair! I _know_ my answers were right. If you would only work them out on the board, you"d soon see."
"Margaret Vaughan," said Miss Crossland sternly, "I am the best judge in this matter, and if I have any more trouble with you this morning I shall send you straight to Miss Martin. I do not allow any girl to speak to me in that tone."
Though inwardly raging, Peggy was forced to put on an outward appearance of submission and good behaviour, and the lessons droned on somehow until the morning was over. Most of the girls fled, as usual the moment the cla.s.s was dismissed; but Peggy stayed behind in the schoolroom to tidy her desk and talk to Nora Pemberton, who just at present was her particular friend among her schoolmates.
"I can"t think how it was my sums were all wrong," she lamented, as she put away the ill-fated home-lesson book. "Did you get yours right, Nora?"
"No, wrong, every one; and I had worked them so carefully."
"Just let me look at your answers. Why, they are exactly like mine! I know they are right. How is it all the other girls got the same as Bertha?"
"Oh, I can tell you that," said Nora, "They all copied her sums, for I saw them doing it just before school began. You know it was the Military Bazaar at the a.s.sembly Rooms on Sat.u.r.day, and I suppose most of the girls were there, and had no time to do their home-work, so they just scribbled down Bertha"s figures before the bell rang."
"How unfair! How shamefully mean!" cried Peggy, with flaming cheeks.
"Miss Crossland ought to work out those sums."
"She won"t, though. You made her so angry about it this morning, and when once she says a thing she sticks to it."
"She"s always hard on me somehow," sighed Peggy. "She"s been perfectly horrible to-day. Why, Nora, what"s the matter?"
For Nora had also had a tidy fit, and had been turning out her desk, and she now drew forth a book with such a very blank and rueful face that Peggy might well exclaim.
"It"s the Literature Notes," said Nora in an awe-struck voice--"that book Miss Martin lent us to copy from, and that vanished so mysteriously a month ago. Don"t you remember what a fearful fuss she made about it, and we were all told to search in our desks? I thought I had looked quite to the bottom of mine, but there it was, under a pile of old exercise-books. Whatever shall I do? She will be so dreadfully angry with me."
"Why, of course, you"ll have to take it back," said Peggy. "But," her love of mischief getting the upper hand, "I don"t see why we shouldn"t have a little fun with it first. You won"t find Miss Martin in the library now, and it would do quite as well at four o"clock, so suppose you put it inside Mary Hill"s desk, just to give her a fright. She"s such a goose, she"ll give a perfect howl of horror when she finds it, and then we"ll pretend to think she must have had it there all the time, and get her into _such_ a state of mind before we tell her."
Nora laughed, for practical jokes were at a high tide of popularity in the cla.s.s, and many were the tricks which the girls played on one another.
"I owe Mary something," she said, "for she tied my hair-ribbon to the back of the desk on Friday, and when I tried to get up I was held fast by my pigtail."
"It will be a good way to pay her back, then," said Peggy. "See, I"ll put it just on the top in front, where she"ll find it first thing; but don"t tell a soul till this afternoon, or you"ll spoil all the fun."
The two conspirators ran downstairs laughing, and were soon romping in the playground. After dinner one of the elder girls suggested rounders, and the game grew so enthralling that time flew by until the bell, ringing for afternoon school, sent the players, hot and rosy with their exertions, hurrying up the great staircase to their cla.s.srooms. As Peggy pa.s.sed the door of Miss Martin"s study she happened to notice Mary Hill come out of it, with a particularly red and uncomfortable look upon her face.
"What has she been doing there?" thought Peggy; but there was neither time to inquire Mary"s errand nor to carry out her antic.i.p.ated joke with the note-book, for the girls were taking their places, and Miss Crossland came in a moment afterwards.
She mounted the platform and rang the bell for order, but, instead of calling their names as usual, she announced:
"Girls, Miss Martin desires that you should all be present in the lecture-hall, where she wishes to address the whole school. File out in order, beginning with the top desk on the right."
Full of astonishment, the girls marched down to the large lecture-hall, where all the cla.s.ses were a.s.sembling, marshalled by their teachers. It was evidently a matter of some importance, for it was seldom indeed that lessons were interrupted in this manner. The girls kept whispering to each other under their breath:
"Whatever can it all be about? Have you heard anything? Why does she want us all here?"
But their surmises were soon put an end to by the appearance of Miss Martin herself, stately and commanding as usual, and with a grieved look on her face. She mounted the platform, and with a little sigh turned to her expectant audience.
"Girls," she began, with an air almost of tragedy, "a very distressing incident has happened to-day--a circ.u.mstance which in all the records of this school has never occurred before. You see this book in my hand,"
and she held up (oh, luckless Peggy!) the missing note-book. "This book of ma.n.u.script notes, which I had compiled myself from various sources, and valued greatly, I lent to be copied by the third form. It was lost, and though I caused every search to be made, I could find no trace of it. Girls, I regret to say that to-day this book has been brought back to school, and _has been placed in another girl"s desk_--in the desk, I repeat, of an innocent girl, who had nothing to do with its loss."
Miss Martin paused, and a wave of horror pa.s.sed over the school. As for Peggy, her blood ran cold. It had never struck her before that the act of placing the book in Mary"s desk could be open to such a construction.
She had meant it all for a joke, and thought Mary would have been the first to join in the fun, and then Nora would, of course, have taken it back. She saw now that, while they had still been romping at rounders, Mary must have gone up to the schoolroom, and finding the missing notes in her desk, had carried them at once to the library.
"Oh, why did we not come up sooner?" groaned Peggy. "Who would ever have thought of Miss Martin taking it like this?"
"I feel," continued the head-mistress sadly, "that we have one girl among us of so dishonourable a nature that she seeks to hide her fault by throwing the blame on to the shoulders of another. Who that girl may be I cannot tell, but her own conscience must surely convict her."
She paused again, and her glance pa.s.sed slowly round the room. Peggy"s face grew burning hot.
"I am determined," Miss Martin went on, "to probe this matter to the bottom, and I now call upon any girl who may have any knowledge on the subject to rise up and tell what she knows."
Peggy tried to look at Nora, but Nora was several rows behind her. For one moment she hesitated, and in that moment she was lost. Emily Thompson had risen in her place.
"Well, Emily," said Miss Martin gravely, "do you know anything about this unhappy affair?"
"I do, Miss Martin," replied Emily in a low voice.
"Tell me at once, then," commanded the head-mistress.
"I would much rather not, please," said Emily, casting down her eyes.
"I don"t like getting another girl into trouble."
"Emily Thompson, this is not the time to shield a companion, and I order you to say at once what you know."