a lot of our time, and the results aren't worth the trouble--I have
nothing particular to say. Oh, well, yes, if you like--let's have blind
man's buff and a magic lantern;" and then, dropping a mock curtsey to her
companions, she dropped out of the south parlor.

"Insufferable girl!" said Dora Russell; "I wonder you try to draw her
out, Cecil. You know perfectly that we none of us care to have anything
to do with her."

"I know perfectly that you are all doing your best to make her life
miserable," said Cecil, suddenly and boldly. "No one in this school has
obeyed Mrs. Willis' command to treat Annie as innocent--you are
practically sending her to Coventry, and I think it is unjust and unfair.
You don't know, girls, that you are ruining poor Annie's happiness."

"Oh, dear! she doesn't seem at all dull," said Miss West, a second-class
girl. "I do think she's a hardened little wretch."

"Little you know about her," said Cecil, the color fading out of her pale
face. Then after a pause, she added; "The injustice of the whole thing is
that in this treatment of Annie you break the spirit of Mrs. Willis'
command--you, none of you, certainly tell her that she is guilty, but you
treat her as such."

Here Hester Thornton said a daring thing.

"I don't believe Mrs. Willis in her heart of hearts considers Annie
guiltless."

These words of Hester's were laughed at by most of the girls, but Dora
Russell gave her an approving nod, and Cecil, looking paler than ever,
dropped suddenly into her seat, and no longer tried to defend her absent
friend.

"At any rate," said Miss Conway, who as the head girl of the whole school
was always listened to with great respect, "it is unfortunate for the
success of our entertainment that there should be all this discussion and
bad feeling with regard to Miss Forest. For my own part, I cannot make
out why the poor little creature should be hunted down, or what affair it
is of ours whether she is innocent or not. If Mr. Everard and Mrs. Willis
say she is innocent, is not that enough? The fact of her guilt or
innocence can't hurt us one way or another. It is a great pity, however,
for our own sakes, that we should be out with her now, for, whatever her
faults, she is the only one of us who is ever gifted with an original
thought. But, as we can't have her, let us set to work without her--we
really can't waste the whole evening over this sort of talk."

Discussions as to the coming pleasure were