Page:Angela Brazil--the leader of the lower school.djvu/213

Rh from some clandestine excursion, and was leaving her incriminatingly moist garments in the cupboard when she was surprised.

The more the affair was investigated, the more everything seemed to indicate her guilt. The girls who had been present with her at preparation were obliged, much against their will, to confess how she had left the room without Miss Lindsay's knowledge by crawling under the table, and what had been merely a piece of mischief assumed a far graver aspect when coupled with other circumstances. It was really a very serious fault of which poor Gipsy was accused. She was supposed not only to have set the school rules deliberately at defiance by taking a surreptitious walk alone in the evening, but to have shielded herself by the most brazen falsehoods. Remembering how, when she had first come to Briarcroft, she had begged to be permitted to go out, had chafed against the confinement of her life, and had constantly quoted the larger liberty allowed in American schools, Miss Poppleton could easily believe that she would be ready to break bounds if she found a suitable opportunity; and though hitherto Gipsy had been strictly truthful, her previous reputation for honour could not do away with the circumstantial evidence of the damp waterproof and galoshes.

The neighbours who had reported noticing one of the Briarcroft boarders in Mansfield Road on several successive evenings could give no account of the truant's personal appearance. It had been dusk at the time, and they had only seen a girl in a sailor hat with a blue-and-white striped band hurrying rapidly past, as