Bess arrived
in Chicago; yet Linda Riggs says she saw Nan taking something in a
store here."

"Hush, Walter, hush!" begged Miss Hagford. "People will hear you."

"Well, people heard her!" declared the angry youth.

"We know Linda Riggs for what she is," Bess put in. "But these other boys
and girls don't. Grace will tell you that Linda is the very meanest girl
at Lakeview Hall."

"Oh! I couldn't say _that_, Bess," gasped timid Grace. "She is my guest
for the evening!"

"Well, I'll say it for you," burst out her brother. "Somebody should tell
the truth about her."

"So they should," chimed in Bess. "She's a mean, spiteful thing!"

"Stop! stop, all of you!" commanded the governess, sternly. "Why, this is
disgraceful."

"I guess it is--I guess it is," said Linda, bitterly. "But this is the
sort of treatment I might expect from anybody so much under the
influence of Sherwood and Harley, as Grace and Walter are. I tell you I
saw Nan Sherwood being held by a detective in Wilson-Meadows store,
because they said she had taken some jewelry from the counter. And she
cannot deny it!"

She said this with such positiveness, and was so much in earnest, that
most of her hearers could not fail to be impressed. They stared at
white-faced Nan to see if she had not something to say in her own
defense. It seemed preposterous for Linda to repeat her charge so
emphatically without some foundation for it.

"It isn't so!" cried Bess, first to gain her breath. "You know, Grace,
Nan hasn't been shopping unless you and I were both with her. _That's_
made up out of whole cloth!"

"You were not with her that day, Miss Smartie," cried the revengeful
Linda. "And you see--she doesn't deny it."

"Of course she denies it!" Bess responded. "Do say something, Nan! Don't
let that girl talk about you in this way."

Then Nan did open her lips--and what she said certainly amazed most of
her hearers. "I was charged with taking a lavalliere from the counter.
But it was found hanging from a lady's coat--"

"Where _you_ hung it, when you saw you were caught!" interposed Linda.

"It was dreadful," Nan went on, brokenly. "I was so frightened and
ashamed that I did not tell anybody about it."

"Nan!" cried Bess. "It's never _true_? You weren't arrested?"

"I--I should have been had the lavalliere not been found," her chum
confessed. "Linda saw me and she told the man I was dishonest. I--I was
so troubled by it all that I didn't tell anybody. It