The Head Girl at the Gables Part 21

"Lorraine," began Miss Kingsley sternly, "I've sent for you to ask you a straight question, and I expect a straight answer. Did you to-day bring to school a letter addressed to--er--a member of the opposite s.e.x?"

Utterly amazed, Lorraine hesitated, then, remembering her note to Morland, replied;

"Yes, Miss Kingsley."

She wondered how the head mistress had got to know about it. Had Claudia been so careless as to leave it inside her exercise-book?

Miss Kingsley's glance was hypnotic in its intensity. The corners of Miss Janet's mouth twitched nervously.

"I'm glad you are candid enough to confess it, though I have ample proof against you. _You_, Lorraine! You, whom I chose as head girl, and leader for the rest of the school! I've never been so bitterly disappointed in anybody!"

Miss Kingsley's voice trembled as she spoke.

"You might at least have the grace to look ashamed of yourself!" added Miss Janet.

Lorraine was staggered, but not ashamed. She could not see that the occasion warranted such sweeping condemnation.

"It was a very harmless letter----" she began in self-justification.

"Harmless!" blazed Miss Kingsley. "If this is your idea of correspondence, I'm disgusted with you. I call it most _unmaidenly!_"

"I don't know what modern girls are coming to!" echoed Miss Janet. "In _my_ young days they held very different standards."

"It will be my duty," continued Miss Kingsley grimly, "to inform your mother of this disgraceful correspondence."

"But Mother knows!" gasped Lorraine.

"She knows?"

"Yes, she saw me write the letter."

"Did she read it?"

"No, she didn't ask to."

"Is she aware what you wrote in it?"

"I expect so."

"Lorraine, I can't believe you! I know Mrs. Forrester too well to imagine that she would allow you to carry on such a clandestine correspondence as this."

"But Mother _likes_ Morland," persisted Lorraine, "and I _had_ to write to him, to send him Rosemary's list of pieces. She asked me to let him have them soon."

Miss Kingsley looked frankly puzzled.

"Morland?" she said inquiringly. "The letter is addressed to an individual named 'Jack'."

Then a great light broke across Lorraine. In her relief she almost laughed. Her suppressed chuckle was fortunately taken for a subdued sob.

"Oh, Miss Kingsley!" she cried. "Did you get the letter out of the hollow tree?"

The head mistress nodded gravely.

"Then it's all a mistake--it wasn't--written to anybody real. It was only a little bit of fun we had among ourselves. Pa--I mean one of us--made up 'Jack' and wrote his letters, and another of us answered them. It was only nonsense!"

"Did you write this?" asked Miss Janet grimly, handing a sheet of note-paper across the table.

It was in Vivien's handwriting, which bore a strong resemblance to Lorraine's own, and it was couched in terms strong enough certainly to rouse a flutter in the breast of a careful schoolmistress. It mourned Jack's absence, referred to turtle doves, Cupid's arrows, and other tender things, thanked him for handsome presents, and looked forward rapturously to the next meeting with him. It ended with fondest love, and was signed: "Your little Forget-me-not".

"No, I didn't write it," answered Lorraine.

"Then who did?"

Lorraine hesitated.

"As it was only a joke, will you please excuse my not answering? It doesn't seem quite fair to give anybody else away. The whole form were in it, really."

Miss Kingsley fixed her with a glance which Lorraine afterwards described as that of a lion-tamer. Then she summed up:

"As you all seem to have been equally foolish, I'll let the matter stand at that. But I wish to say that I've never in my life read more perfectly idiotic, senseless, worthless _drivel_ than is contained in these silly letters, and if that's your idea of amus.e.m.e.nt, I'm sorry for you! I should have thought that _you_, Lorraine, would have been above such nonsense, and would have used your influence to interest the girls in something more sensible. These letters must be stopped at once. I distinctly forbid anything more of the sort, and you may tell the others so. Do you understand?"

Miss Kingsley, as she spoke, tore 'Jack's' latest effusion into shreds, and threw the bits into the waste-paper basket.

A very dejected and indignant Sixth Form listened to Lorraine's account of the interview.

"Miss Janet must have fished some of the letters out of that tree, and read them and put them back!"

"What a sneaking trick of her!"

"And she thought it was you, because you'd got your feet wet."

"Sporting of her to examine our shoes! It's like Sherlock Holmes!"

"Sporting! I call it disgusting!"

"Is poor darling 'Jack' _never_ to write again to his little 'Forget-me-not'?" demanded Vivien, with a note of tragedy in her voice.

"We'd better drown him, or kill him at the front, or let him die suddenly of pneumonia!" said Patsie sadly. "Then you can look decently sorry for a while. It really _is_ too bad, just when I was working up so nicely for the elopement! He was buying a new car on purpose. Never mind! I'll write a novel some day, when I've left school, and I'll put all the letters in--every sc.r.a.p of them. And when it's published, I'll send a copy of it to Miss Janet!"

"Oh!" thrilled the excited circle.

"She'll say _then_: 'The dear girl! I always said she was clever, and would turn out a famous auth.o.r.ess!' People generally say afterwards that they 'always said'."

"Oh, Patsie! It _will_ be so delightful! Do begin it soon!"

"Not till I leave school, and that's a whole term and a half off, with the Easter holidays thrown in. You'll have to wait!"