handed it to Miss Edith.

"I must question Daisy Scatcherd at once," she remarked peremptorily. "I
can't understand how the letter came to be in her pocket at all."

The luckless Daisy, subjected to a searching examination, could at first
render no account of how she came to be mixed up in the affair. Then
little by little a vague remembrance returned to her, and she began
dimly to recall the circumstances.

"It must have been on my birthday," she faltered. "I have a kind of
recollection that I stopped the postman in the drive, and he gave me
several letters. But indeed I never noticed one for Gipsy! If I even
looked at the name, I didn't take it in properly. I suppose I only saw
it wasn't for me, and stuffed it in my pocket while I opened my own
letters. Then I utterly forgot all about it."

"It must be a warning to you, Daisy, against carelessness--a warning to
last you the rest of your life," said Miss Poppleton, relieving her
feelings by improving the occasion. "Your thoughtless act has had the
most unfortunate consequences. It's no use crying now" (as Daisy
dissolved into tears). "You can't mend matters. But I hope you'll take
this to heart, and be more careful in future."

"If we could only find that poor, unfortunate child, Gipsy," sobbed Miss
Edith, when the weeping Daisy had taken her departure. "I always said
perhaps her father wasn't an adventurer after all. I think you were too
hard on her, Dorothea--too hard altogether!" Which, was the nearest
approach to insubordination that Miss Edith, in all her years of meek
subserviency to her sister, had ever yet dared to venture upon.

CHAPTER XVIII

Gipsy at Large

AND where, all this time, was Gipsy, whom we left running down the road
in the direction of Greyfield?

She tore along at the top of her speed, until she had put a considerable
distance between herself and Briarcroft; then, panting and almost
breathless, she slackened her pace, and looked round to see whether
anyone was following her. As nobody of a more suspicious character than
an errand boy and a nurse girl with a perambulator was in sight, she
began to congratulate herself that she had escaped unobserved. How soon
her absence would be discovered depended upon when Miss Poppleton or one
of the monitresses next paid a visit to the dressing-room; and she
laughed to picture the consternation that would ensue when the door was
unlocked and her prison found to be vacant. No doubt they wou