we went. It will be awful afterwards when the fun is over."

"But we will enjoy ourselves, Susy, while the fun lasts," said Kathleen.
She tried to believe that she was enjoying herself and was having a
right good time. She tried to forget the fact that Alice Tennant might
really have seen her off, and that Mrs. Hopkins had justice in her
remarks when she begged and implored of Kathleen not to go to the train.

"What can she have found out?" she thought.

She now turned to Susy.

"Has your mother learned anything, Susy?" she said.

"What do you mean?" said Susy, turning very pink.

"Well, you know, as I was running here--Oh, girls, I had such a lark!
What do you think happened? That horrid Alice--Alice Tennant--ran after
me as I was leaving the house. I raced her across the common, and then
to get rid of her I climbed up into an oak-tree. She never saw me, and
ran on down the passage. Of course, my only chance of getting to the
station was to go by the long way.--Half-way there I came across your
mother, Susy, and she tried to stop me, and said she must speak to me.
Dear, she did seem in a state! Evidently there's a great deal of
excitement and watching going on in that school."

"There will be a great deal of excitement to-morrow," said Susy. "It
strikes me it will be all up with us to-morrow--that is, if Ruth tells."

"If Ruth tells! What do you mean?"

"They are going to do their utmost to get her to tell; and if she does
tell they will call out our names and expel us, that's all. Oh! I can't
bear to think of it--I can't bear to think of it."

Susy's voice broke. Tears trembled in her bright black eyes, and she
turned her head to one side. Kathleen gave her a quick glance.

"It will be all right," she said. "Ruth won't tell. Ruth is the kind who
never tells. She told me to-day she wouldn't."

"She'll be a brick if she doesn't," said Kate Rourke. "But then, of
course, you know--"

"I know what?"

"Oh, nothing. What's the good of making ourselves melancholy on a night
like this?"

"If I were expelled," said Clara Sawyer, "I should leave Merrifield. I
could never lift up my head again. You can't think what impudent sort of
boys my brothers are, and they have always twitted me for my good
fortune in getting into the Great Shirley School. They say that if we
are to be expelled it will be done in public. The governors are
determined to read us a lesson. That's what they say."

"Who cares what they say?" s