As the real Miss MacIver, six feet of indignation, turned away trembling with fury, she looked back an instant over her shoulder to say: “You or I, Biss Wayne, bust leave Valdivia—” But Bella had already vanished into the room of penitence, and was feverishly pulling off her strange habiliments. The bare toes of Miss Smulsky had been hurriedly withdrawn from between the banisters, and any girl but Hildegarde Mar would have been fleeing down the staircase, “and so home.” But she walked quietly away, her large deliberateness even a little emphasized as she went, weighed down by fearful speculation as to what form of retribution would overtake the wicked, new girl. Hildegarde went to school the next morning ten minutes earlier than usual. No one yet in the big school-room, so she wandered restlessly through the empty halls, wishing she dared go up-stairs and compare notes with Madeleine. From a window at the back, looking out on a group of eucalyptus trees and a mass of syringa, she saw little Bella Wayne sitting very subdued on the topmost of two stone steps; slate on knee and pencil poised, but eyes fastened on a woodpecker tap-tap-tapping at the tree. Hildegarde went out and spoke kindly to the unlucky little girl. “What’s happened since—?” “Nothing much,” and Bella put up her chin. “Are you—are you going away?” “Me? No.” And with that she dropped her slate and pencil on the step, dropped her face into her two hands, and wept. Hildegarde thought she had misheard—it must be that Bella was crying because she was expelled. After all Hildegarde had expected she would be expelled. What she had not expected was that she, one of the big girls, would be so sorry to hear that this was the last she should see of little Bella Wayne. Hildegarde picked up the broken slate, and tried to think of something comforting. “I was _sure_ they’d send me home,” Bella sobbed. “But they w-won’t! Not even if I d-don’t beg her p-par-don.” “And you _want_ to be sent home!” “Of course!” Bella got out a handkerchief three inches square and dabbed her eyes. “Was that why you did it?” “No. It _would_ have been if I’d thought she’d come and catch me. But—no—I did it because—oh, because there wasn’t any other earthly thing to do in that room!” she said, with a burst. Then, more collectively: “Were you ever in Miss MacIver’s room?” “No. I’ve always been rather afraid of Miss MacIver.” “Well, wait till you’ve seen her room—and her family! You’ll be ’fraider than ever. The only pictures she has in there are photographs of a lot of nightmarey people all just like her. Oh, it was dreadful being shut up there with millions of MacIvers! I did everything I could think of to forget ’em. I looked at all her dull books. Then I smelt all her bottles—_they_ aren’t so dull. Do you know she’s got seventeen on her wash-stand?” “Not bottles!” “Bottles. When I’d smelt them all—some very queer—what else _was_ there to take your mind off those pictures but to try on her things?”