! Please don't mention the matter to anybody. You can
give _me_ the key of the museum till Miss Kingsley returns. You don't
need to go there again at present?"

"I'd be scared to death!" confessed Lorraine.

In spite of Uncle Barton Forrester's injunctions, the episode of the cut
telephone wires became known. The Castletons on their return home had
found Madame Bertier in their father's studio, sitting for her portrait,
and, being full of the exciting subject, had poured out their story. The
pretty Russian was aghast.

"It is too horrible!" she exclaimed; "to have happened while Miss
Kingsley is away! Some burglar would be bad--but it is perhaps a spy. I
was at The Gables yesterday, just for a moment, to fetch a book. I saw
nothing! Had I met anyone I should indeed have been very alarmed! The
police will no doubt keep the house under observation now."

"The question is how anybody got into the room when it was locked," said
Claudia.

"Perhaps they brought a ladder. You say the window was left open?"

"Yes, but it's shut and fastened now. Whoever came wouldn't be able to
get in so easily again."

The Easter holidays were nearly over, and in a few days the Miss
Kingsleys would be back to look after their own property, and take what
precautions they thought fit against burglars or spies. At the near
prospect of term time, Claudia, whose spirits had effervesced lately,
suddenly waxed serious. Lorraine could not make out what was the matter
with her.

"You look about as cheerful as an undertaker, old sport!" she
remonstrated. "Something's got on your nerves!"

"I'm in a beastly hole," admitted Claudia, with a gusty sigh. "I know
I'm a slacker."

"What have you been doing?"

"Something awful!"

"Go ahead and confess, then!"

They were sitting in the garden at Windy Howe, resting after planting
some rows of peas, and sheltering under a tree from the heavy drops of a
sudden April shower. Claudia pulled off her gardening gloves, and rested
a delicately-modelled chin upon a prettily-shaped hand. There was
desperate trouble in her blue eyes.

"I'm scared to go back to school, and that's the fact! I've done an
awful thing! The day we broke up, Miss Janet gave me some papers to be
signed and sent in to the Kindergarten College. She said they must be
posted before the 6th. I put them in my coat pocket. Well--I've only
just remembered them."

Lorraine was aghast.

"Claudia! Your application for the exam! How _cou