James, the house man, carried the girl upstairs, and the Youngest Teacher put her to bed, where she opened her eyes to look unseeingly at Belinda and then closed them wearily and lay quite still, a limp little creature whose pale face looked pitifully thin and lifeless against the white pillow. The Queer Little Thing's wish had been fulfilled, and illness had come without long delay. For a moment Belinda looked down at the girl. Then she turned and went swiftly to Miss Ryder's study, her eyes blazing, her mouth so stern that Amelia Bowers, who met her on the stairs, hurried to spread the news that Miss Carewe was "perfectly hopping mad about something." Once in the presence of the August One the little teacher lost no time in parley. "Miss Ryder," she said crisply--and at the tone her employer looked up in amazement--"I've told you about Bonita Allen. I've been to you again and again about her. You knew that she was fretting her heart out and half sick, and then you knew that for several days she hasn't been eating a thing. I tried to make you understand that the matter was serious and that something radical needed to be done, but you insisted that the child would come around all right and that we mustn't give in to her. I begged you to send for her father and you said it wasn't necessary. I'm here to take your orders, Miss Ryder, but I can't stand this sort of thing. I know the girl better than any of the rest of you do, and I know it isn't badness that makes her act so. She's different, queer, capable of feeling things the ordinary girl doesn't know. She isn't made for this life. There's something in her that can't endure it. She's frantic with homesickness, and it's perfectly useless to try to keep her here or make her like other girls. Now she's ill--really ill. I've just put her to bed, and, honestly, Miss Ryder, if we don't send for her father we'll have a tragedy on our hands. It sounds foolish, but it's true. If nobody else telegraphs to Mr. Allen _I'm_ going to do it." The gauntlet was down. The defiance was hurled, and as Belinda stood waiting for the crash she mentally figured out the amount of money needed for her ticket home; but Miss Ryder was alarmed, and in the spasm of alarm she quite overlooked the mutiny. "Oh, my dear Miss Carewe. This will never do, never do," she said uncertainly. "It would sound so very badly if it got out--a pupil so unhappy with us that she starved herself into an illness. Oh, no, it would never do. We must take steps at once. I wish the child had stayed in Texas--but who could have foreseen--and eighteen hundred dollars is such an excellent rate. I do dislike exceptions. Rules are so much more satisfactory. Now as a rule----" "She's an exception," interrupted Belinda. "I'll telephone for the doctor while you are writing the telegram." "Oh, no, not the doctor. He wouldn't understand the conditions, and he might talk and create a false impression."