Pixie hung her head, and her cheeks grew am scarlet as the scarlet dressing-gown itself. She lifted one little slippered foot and stood perched on the other like a funny little ruffled stork in the midst of the shining floor, and the watching faces of the girls were pretty to see with their expressions of tender amusement and sympathy. "Please, Miss Phipps," said Pixie hoarsely, "I was doing nothing. I was only after putting in the hot bottle!" Miss Phipps stared, Mademoiselle gave a sharp exclamation of surprise, and turned impetuously to her Principal. "The 'ot bottle! It is true. I 'ave one every night, but I thought that Ellen--that one of the maids--" "We have put no hot bottle in your bed, Mademoiselle. It is Miss Emily's rule that any of the young ladies may have bottles of their own, if they take the trouble to fill them in the bathroom as they go to bed, and to put them back there in the morning. We never put one in a bed unless in the case of illness," said Ellen, who stood in a corner of the room, one of the most anxious and interested of the spectators; and at that Miss Phipps turned once more to Pixie. "Then are we to understand that it was your own bottle of which you are talking? And what made you think of lending it to Mademoiselle?" "She told me that she was always cold," said Pixie faintly. "I didn't like to think of her lying there shivering. Bridgie gave me the bottle when I came away in a little red flannel cover. `You're such a frog!' says she, `maybe this will warm you,' but I just roll my feet in my nightgown and hug them in my hands until they are warm. I thought perhaps Mademoiselle couldn't do that. Ye can't bend so easy when you're old, so she needed the bottle most." "_Ma petite_!" cried Mademoiselle. "_Ma cherie_!"--and she would have rushed forward and taken Pixie into her arms straight away, had not Miss Phipps held her back with a restraining touch. CHAPTER FOURTEEN. PIXIE INTERCEDES. "One more question, Pixie, and remember I place absolute reliance on what you say, for you have given proof that you are to be trusted. You heard Lottie's insinuation that you might have had some share in the accident! Had you touched the scent-bottle at all that night?" "I had not, Miss Phipps!" The grey eyes looked into the face of the questioner with a steady light. "I never noticed it at all until the girls began talking about it, and then said I, `I must have a look at that bottle before I'm much older,' and so I did that very same evening, but never a finger did I lay upon it. I put me hands behind me back and just doubled meself over the table--like this!--looking at it all I knew, but not daring as much as to breathe upon it, and from that hour I was never within yards of its presence."