"George! Sarah!" she descended upon the combatants and pulled them apart with no gentle hand. "I'm ashamed of you! What can you be thinking of! George, you must know better than to strike a girl, and Sarah, what would your mother say if she knew you were fighting with a boy? Why I never heard of such a thing--never!" and Miss Ames looked as though she never had. Sarah darted over to the space behind the atlas table where George had thrown the paper weight. She lifted the glass cube and picked up the little mashed object under it. "He's killed it!" she sobbed. "He went and killed my little snake!" Miss Ames lost her patience which is not to be wondered at, considering the trying half hour she had endured. "Sarah Willis you march down to the principal's office," she said severely. "And throw that disgusting object in the trash can on your way down. Don't you ever bring another snake, alive or dead, into this room as long as I am the teacher. I want you to tell Mr. Oliver exactly what has occurred here this morning and be sure you explain to him that you fought George simply because he killed that wretched reptile." Sarah's heart beat uncomfortably fast as she walked down the broad stone steps to the first floor where the principal's office was. Her class room was on the third floor. On the second floor she stopped and wrapped the dead snake in her handkerchief--for a wonder she had one--and when she reached the first floor she studied the pictures hung in the corridor with minutest care. For once in her short life Sarah was anxious to have time to stand still. Usually exasperatingly indifferent to rebuke or reproval, Miss Ames had hit upon the one punishment that Sarah could be fairly said to dread--an interview with the principal. She approached the glass door marked "office" slowly. The door was closed. All the stories she had ever heard of the boys who had been "sent to the office," flashed through her mind. Few girls were ever thus punished and it was a fourth grade tradition that a girl bad enough to need an interview with the principal was always expelled. Sarah wondered what her brother would say if she came home and said she was expelled. Rosemary would feel the disgrace keenly--no one in the Willis family had even been expelled from school, Sarah was quite sure. Did you knock, or did you go right in? Was the principal always there? Perhaps he might be away for the day--Sarah devoutly hoped he would be. She shut her eyes tightly, took a firmer grip on the handkerchief containing the dead snake, and knocked on the glass panel. "Come in," called a pleasant voice, a woman's voice. Sarah opened the door and stepped in. She saw a large, sunny room with a desk in the center, and a smaller desk over by the window where a young woman was typing busily. "Mr. Oliver isn't in, is he?" said Sarah speaking at a gallop. A swift glance had shown her that the young woman was the only person in the room.