Principal and teacher faced each other. Miss Ryder's superb calm had vanished. Her eyes were blazing. "Dis-gust-ing!" she said. Belinda wrestled heroically to suppress a fit of untimely mirth. She knew Amelia and her set so well. She could picture each detail of the musical flirtation, each ridiculous touch of sentimentality. "I shall expel her." Miss Ryder's tone was firm. Belinda laid a soft hand impulsively upon the arm of the August One. "She isn't bad--just foolish----" "She's made the school ridiculous." "The school can stand it. She's made herself more ridiculous, and it will be hard for her to stand that." "How would you punish her?" "Tell the story to the whole school to-morrow. Rub in the fact that the serenader is a coarse, common, illiterate groom. Mention that the stablemen and other servants all around the block are chuckling over the thing. Rob the episode of every atom of romance. Make it utterly vulgar, and sordid, and ugly, and absurd." Miss Ryder looked at the Youngest Teacher with something akin to admiration. "I believe you are right, Miss Carewe. It will be punishment enough. I'll mention no names." "Oh, no. Everyone will know." There was a short but dramatic special session the next morning. The principal slew and spared not; and all the guilty squirmed uncomfortably, while the arch offender hid her face in her hands and sobbed miserably over shattered romance and open humiliation. Even her boon companions tittered and grinned derisively at her as she fled to her room when the conference ended. But the Youngest Teacher followed, and her eyes were very kind. CHAPTER III THE ELOPEMENT OF EVANGELINE MARIE EVA MAY rose, like a harvest moon, above the Ryder school horizon late in November. Large bodies being proverbially slow of motion, she had occupied the first two months of the school year in acquiring enough momentum to carry her from Laurelton, Mississippi, to New York and install her in the Misses Ryder's most desirable room--providentially left vacant by a defection in the school ranks. The price of the room was high, but money meant nothing to Eva May. Creature comfort meant much. The new pupil clamoured for a private bath, but finally resigned herself to the least Spartan variety of school simplicity, bought a large supply of novels, made an arrangement by which, for a consideration, the second-floor maid agreed to smuggle fresh chocolates into the house three times a week, unpacked six wrappers, and settled down to the arduous process of being "finished" by a winter in New York. Miss Lucilla Ryder, conscientious to a fault in educational matters, made an effort to plant Eva May's feet upon the higher paths of learning, and enrolled the girl in various classes; but the passive resistance of one hundred and ninety pounds of inert flesh and a flabby mind were too much for the worthy principal.