It was shortly after this that Katharine Holland, who sat beside Bonita at the table, confided to Belinda that that funny little Allen girl didn't eat a thing. The waitress came to Belinda with the same tale, and the Youngest Teacher sought out Bonita and reasoned with her. "You really must eat, my dear," she urged. "Why?" "Why, you'll be ill if you don't." "How soon?" Belinda looked dazed. "I'm afraid I don't understand." "How soon will I be sick?" "Very soon, I'm afraid," the puzzled teacher answered. "That's good. I don't feel as if I could wait much longer." Belinda gasped. "Do you mean to say you want to be ill?" "If I get very sick Daddy will come for me." The teacher looked helplessly at the quiet, great-eyed child, then launched into expostulation, argument, entreaty. Bonita listened politely and was profoundly unimpressed. "It's wicked, dear child. It would make your father wretchedly unhappy." "He'd be awfully unhappy if he understood, anyway. He thinks I'm not really unhappy and that it's his duty to keep me up here and make a lady of me, no matter how lonely he is without me. He wrote me so--but I know he'd be terribly glad if he had a real excuse for taking me home." Belinda exhausted her own resources and appealed to Miss Lucilla, who stared incredulously over her nose-glasses and sent for Bonita. After the interview she called for the Youngest Teacher, and the two failures looked at each other helplessly. "It's an extraordinary thing," said Miss Lucilla in her most magisterial tone--"a most extraordinary thing. In all my experience I've seen nothing like it. Nothing seems to make the slightest impression upon the child. She's positively crazy." "You will tell her father to send for her, won't you?" Miss Lucilla shook her head stubbornly. "Not at all. It would be the ruination of the child to give in to her whims and bad temper now. If she won't listen to reason she must be allowed to pay for her foolishness. When she gets hungry enough she will eat. It's absurd to talk about a child of twelve having the stoicism to starve herself into an illness just because she is homesick at boarding-school." Belinda came back to her threadworn argument. "But Bonita is different, Miss Ryder." "She's a very stubborn, selfish child," said Miss Ryder resentfully, and turning to her desk she closed the conversation. Despite discipline, despite pleadings, despite cajolery, Bonita stood firm. Eat she would not, and when, on her way to class one morning, the scrap of humanity with the set lips and the purple shadows round her eyes fainted quietly, Belinda felt that a masterly inactivity had ceased to be a virtue.