"She'll only be frightened and cry," Sarah said, "and she'll say anything you want her to. She wouldn't _dare_ cheat in an examination." "Then you admit that you copied from her?" "I do not!" Sarah said, her teeth chattering. "I tell you it was a fluke! Miss Somerville jolly well knows I wouldn't do it!" Miss Somerville was the new and still enthusiastic math teacher, but her enthusiasm would be gone by the end of the term, and so would Miss Somerville. "That will do!" said the headmistress. "Impertinence will not improve matters." * * * * * There was a timid knock on the door and a girl of Sarah's age, but smaller, came in. She had changed into the school uniform and wore steel-rimmed spectacles. "Stand beside Stone, Harvey," the headmistress said. "Now I want you to think very carefully before you answer what I'm going to ask you." Angela Harvey looked terrified and began to cry. "There, you see?" Sarah said. "You're only doing this because you don't like my mother! You want me to leave school, and it's the only excuse you can find!" "Be quiet," Miss Wakefield said with an unpleasant smile. She never lost her temper. "Did you, or did you not," she went on to the damp Angela, "copy the answers in your arithmetic from Stone?" "Oh, no! Oh, I _wouldn't_, Miss Wakefield!" "Then how is it you have seventeen right answers? You never do as well as that, and you got the same three wrong that Stone did." "I don't know, Miss Wakefield! I don't _know_!" Angela sobbed loudly and became smaller than ever. "I'm afraid," said Miss Wakefield, who looked quite otherwise, "that unless your _friend_ here can explain this curious--this odd coincidence by admitting she copied _your_ answers, I shall have to ask your parents to remove you from St. Agatha's at once." Sarah's face was bright red, but it had the look of fever. "How simply rotten of you! You're just trying to get me to confess to something I didn't do, to save Angela!" The headmistress felt her heart beat with excitement and pleasure. Why, the child was positively crimson with temper! "You are not helping her by behaving like a common guttersnipe. At this school, we try to behave like ladies. Perhaps at Mr. Russell's--" "At Mr. Russell's school," Sarah interrupted, "I'm sure nobody would think it was worthwhile to cheat." "Then you admit you cheated?" Sarah looked at Angela, and back at the headmistress. "Yes!" Miss Wakefield smiled. "Well, then, I think there is nothing more to be said. You may go, Harvey." "You," Sarah said, looking at Miss Wakefield with blazing fury, "are a coward and a--a _black-mailer_!" Tiny cracks seemed to appear in the headmistress's porcelain composure. Angela had not yet left the room and heard Sarah's outburst. She stopped at the door and turned around with wide eyes.