u have one great tremendous fling; you do what is wrong; you
have a good--a very good--time, and you know it won't last; you know
that afterwards will come--the deluge."

"You are a silly!" said Kathleen. "Why, what could happen? Nobody need
know; we will be far too careful for that. I can't tell you how
splendidly I have planned things. I have got up my headache already, in
order to go to my room and thus avoid all suspicion."

"Oh dear!" said Susy. "It doesn't sound right, does it?"

"Right or wrong, it is fun," said Kathleen. "I am going to have it so.
I have got the money, and I mean to have a magnificent time. Now don't
keep me; I must run into school. It is horrid of them to grudge us our
little bit of amusement."

Susy agreed with her friend; indeed, during those days she was nearly
lifted off her feet, so excited was she, so charmed, so altogether
amazed at Kathleen O'Hara's condescension to her. Before Kathleen
arrived at the school Susy was a good little girl, who helped her mother
in the shop, and had dreams of going into another shop herself
by-and-by. In those days she did not consider herself a lady, nor expect
ladies to take any special notice of her. But those dull and stupid days
were no more. Gold and sunshine and rich color and marvellous dreams had
all come into her life since the arrival of Kathleen at Merrifield. For
Kathleen had discrimination; it mattered nothing to her whether a girl
paid or did not pay for her lessons, whether she belonged to the
despised foundationers or was respected and looked up to by paying
girls. Indeed, if anything, Kathleen had a decided leaning towards the
foundationers; and she, Kathleen, was a lady--she belonged to what her
mother and Aunt Church called the "real quality." "None of your
upstarts," Aunt Church had said, "but one who for generations has
belonged to the aristocrats; and they are of the kind who are too great
in themselves to be proud. They are proud in the right way, but they
never look down on folks." Yes, Susy was a happy girl now.

But, after all, was she quite happy? Was she not at this very minute
more or less oppressed by a secret fear? Suppose any single individual
in Merrifield heard of the midnight picnic--the great, daring, midnight
excursion into the heart of London. Susy knew far better than Kathleen
what a mad action the girls were about to perpetrate. She knew because
she lived with the class who discussed such things very openly. If t