It was after opening exercises on Monday morning, that Mr. Hunt, stepping to the front of the platform, announced that the pupils from Miss Fellows’ room who had absented themselves from French on Friday afternoon, were to go to his office instead of to their classroom.

The assembly-room had been very still while the principal was speaking, but as he finished a little ripple of excitement ran over it, and here and there there was a curious turning of heads. Then Miss Rankin struck the preliminary chords, and the various classes formed into line.

Blue Bonnet, with Kitty just behind and Ruth only two places ahead, was wishing with all her heart that presently she too might drop out of line with the others. The fourteen had not been the only ones towards whom curious glances had been turned that morning. “The girl who had not cut” was as much an object of interest as the pupils who had; only there had been no sympathy for her.

That she didn’t look as if she cared, was the general verdict; Alec, watching her from his corner of the big room, knew better. He would have334 liked to tell those girls what he thought of them—it was the girls who were the worst. He was glad when opening exercises were over and Blue Bonnet had reached the comparative shelter of her classroom.

She was glad, too, though for the moment, in spirit at least, she was in the office with the fourteen. What would Mr. Hunt say to them? Kitty had said once that he could be “rather awful.” Perhaps Kitty had exaggerated; she had not found him so.

But the young people waiting in the office were not so hopeful.

“I believe he’s just keeping us waiting on purpose!” Kitty grumbled, as the moments went by and Mr. Hunt did not appear.

“We’ll lose our Latin,” Susy mourned.

“If that’s all we lose, we’ll be mighty lucky,” one of the boys told her.

“Kit’s lost her temper already,” Billy Slade remarked.

“Why didn’t he tell us he was going to take the class Friday afternoon?” his sister Debby protested. “Then we should have been all right.”

“Hush! he’s coming!” one of the other girls warned.

“Get out your hankys, young ladies!” Billy whispered. “Try and look as penitent as possible!”

335 “I won’t!” Kitty declared. “I’m not sorry, and I won’t say I am!”

“You will before he’s through with you, my young friend,” Billy retorted.

Kitty tossed her red head defiantly, but a moment later even her courage wavered at sight of Mr. Hunt’s face.

For a moment he said nothing. Then, sitting down at his desk, he put one or two direct questions to each in turn. After which followed another short silence, broken only by the ticking of the clock, and from a room below, the sound of children chanting their multiplication table in unison.

“Twice two is four!” Debby found herself nervously repeating it with them under her breath. Would Mr. Hunt never speak!

She caught Susy’s eye; Susy was looking penitent enough to touch a heart of stone, Debby thought. So, for that matter, were most of the girls.

Debby began to realize that anything begun in haste might require repenting of at leisure.

And then Mr. Hunt pronounced sentence, prefacing it first with a few remarks, which, if brief, were none the less pointed.

He considered their recent conduct utterly inexcusable; it had involved not only a wilful and deliberate breaking of rules, but, in intention, great336 discourtesy and disrespect towards a gentleman who was a comparative stranger to them, and, in a sense, the guest of the class.

He should, therefore, suspend them in a body for one week; they could report to him, before school opened, next Monday morning; also, it being an implied condition that all competitors for the Sargent should be pupils in good standing, it was an open question whether or no they would have the right to try for it. He would decide upon that later. They were dismissed.

Out in the yard, fourteen very crestfallen young people looked at each other in dismay.

Not to be allowed to try for the Sargent! Each of the fourteen felt an immediate and strong conviction that he or she would have been among the prize winners.

To be suspended for a whole week!

Ruth mopped her eyes openly. Oh, dear, what would her mother and father say!

“He certainly can do things up brown, when he sets out to,” Billy commented, a rueful note underlying his chuckle.

Kitty stamped her foot. “It isn’t fair! We had every right to do what we did—under the circumstances.”

“Except the right—to do it,” one of the boys commented.

“How everybody looks at us,” Hester sighed.337 “I suppose they’re wondering what we are all doing out of school at this time of the morning.”

“Probably they think we’re delegates to something or other,” Billy remarked, “chosen on account of good conduct.”

“Cut it!” one of his companions commanded.

“We did, once,” Debby laughed, “but we never will again.”

“It isn’t fair!” Kitty repeated; she hoped her father would see it in that light. “Come on home with me, Debby; at any rate, we sha’n’t have to study.”

“Aren’t you going to try and keep up with the class this week?” Hester asked.

Kitty shrugged. “Maybe—maybe not. I do wish Amanda Parker would go visiting for the week,” she confided to Debby, as they turned the corner together. “She’ll be mighty tiresome! She’s such an ‘I told you so’ sort of girl.”

“Isn’t it queer,” Debby said, “that Blue Bonnet, who dislikes school more than any of us do, hasn’t got to—”

“Don’t you mention Blue Bonnet Ashe to me!” Kitty broke in. “Horrid little prig!”

“You know better, Kitty Clark!”

“Then she’s a coward—and that’s even worse.”

“Alec says he knows she had some good reason.”

“Then it’s the first time she’s ever had a good reason for anything. Debby, listen—it’s as I told338 Amanda yesterday,—you’ve got to choose between us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Kitty!”

Kitty sniffed; at that moment she resembled nothing so much as a porcupine with its quills all ready for action. “I mean it!” she insisted.

Debby herself was not in her calmest mood; inwardly she very much regretted that rash speech of hers which had set this particular ball rolling. She wasn’t going to be dictated to by Kitty Clark—who was largely to blame for the scrape they were in. “Then I choose Blue Bonnet,” she said.

“Naturally! She has so much more to offer.”

“In the way of sweet temper—I quite agree with you.”

Kitty slammed the front gate with an energy that brought her mother to the door. Mrs. Clark was something of an invalid, and her daughter had thought it as well not to trouble her with any account of Friday’s doings until she found out what the consequences were. And a particularly troublesome case had kept the doctor from reading the signs of the times.

But there was no keeping things back any longer, and Kitty went promptly to the heart of the matter, going into the subject with a fullness and a fluency that reduced her mother to the verge of hysterics.

“I don’t know what your father will say!” she339 cried, eying Kitty in mingled amazement and dismay. Girls never did such things in her day.

Kitty retired to the old swing on the side piazza. There was nothing to be ashamed of—they had only stood up for their rights. Try as she would, she could not shut out the sight of the pleasant, busy classroom, with Blue Bonnet sitting just in front of her. It had required some diplomacy to effect such an arrangement; Miss Rankin would never have allowed it. In her secret heart, Kitty had always felt that she stood just a little nearer to Blue Bonnet Ashe than any of the other club members.

But of course, all that was changed now. One could not be friends with a girl who—

Kitty gave the swing an impatient push. She was glad that she had not gone to the matinée with them on Saturday—though Alec had been mighty angry with her for holding out; Blue Bonnet should see that they were not all going to—

She was glad, too, that she had cut short Amanda’s enthusiastic account of the afternoon’s delights.

Kitty was not the only one of the fourteen to whom the thought of the classroom from which they had been exiled had grown suddenly very dear.

On the other hand, their fellow-pupils were giving no less thought to them. When recess came,340 and there was still no sign of them, excitement ran high, so did conjecture.

Blue Bonnet, standing alone quite at the lower end of the yard, wondered forlornly if all the recesses to come were to be like this? For the first time in her life, she had been cut, and by more than one schoolmate, and the experience had been far from pleasant.

Sarah, of them all, acted just as usual; but Sarah was—Sarah; Amanda was clearly on the fence—very well, she might stay there. Of her intimates among the French class, Ruth and Susy had been too absorbed in their own thoughts, during those few moments before school opened, to do more than say good morning. Debby had barely nodded, while Kitty had done neither.

It was Kitty’s attitude that hurt most. Alec had refused to give her Kitty’s reason for not accepting his invitation—as if she could not guess, and he had managed, for this time, to break down the sense of reserve and embarrassment between herself and the other girls. Besides, at the theatre one forgot other people.

But Sunday had not been easy; Blue Bonnet had come home from Sunday-school in hardly the state of mind her teacher—a gentle little body—would have rejoiced in. The talk with Grandmother in the twilight, and Aunt Lucinda’s few words of encouragement, had helped some.

341 But to-day! And there would be all of April and May, besides the rest of March and part of June, before school closed.

Blue Bonnet turned to watch a group of children; they were playing “The farmer in the dell,” and Julia Blake beckoned invitingly to her to come make one of the big ring. Any of the little Blakes could have told you what a delightful playfellow Blue Bonnet was.

Blue Bonnet shook her head; at another time she would have gone readily enough, but no one should say she had been forced into finding friends among the “primaries.”

Sarah was crossing the yard towards her, while midway between Sarah and the open doors, Amanda halted, irresolutely.

“Oh, Blue Bonnet!” Sarah called.

Blue Bonnet stood still, her hands behind her. “Duty or choice?” she demanded, as Sarah came up.

Sarah looked puzzled.

“Did you come because you wanted to, or because you didn’t want to?”

“Why shouldn’t I want to?” Sarah looked really hurt.

Blue Bonnet slipped an arm about her. “Sarah, you dear, I might’ve known you wouldn’t go............