The affair made the most immense sensation in the school. Nothing else was talked of next morning, and the day girls questioned the boarders closely upon every detail. "Isn't it awful?" sighed Lennie Chapman. "And to think that we had to tell about her!" "We don't believe she's really done it, though," protested Hetty Hancock. "It looks bad, I'm afraid," said Mary Parsons, shaking her head gravely. "It's so queer!" "Very queer for a girl who set herself up to teach other people, like Gipsy," sneered Maude Helm. "What do you think of your precious leader now?" "Where is Gipsy?" asked Meg Gordon. "Locked up in the dressing-room next Poppie's bedroom till she confesses, and that she declares she won't do, if she stays there till she dies! We've none of us seen her, of course. We're forbidden to go anywhere near." "Oh, poor Gipsy! I'm so sorry for her! Whatever did she go and do it for?" wailed Daisy Scatcherd. "You don't for a second suppose Gipsy's guilty?" said Meg Gordon indignantly. "If you do--well then, you just don't know Gipsy Latimer, that's all!" CHAPTER XVI A Friend in Need MISS POPPLETON, having, as she deemed, successfully detected Gipsy in her misdoings, was determined to force her into making a full confession. The girl's repeated denials she regarded as mere stubborn effrontery, and after several stormy scenes she had locked her up in the dressing-room, to try if a spell of solitary confinement would reduce her to submission. Poor Gipsy, agitated, overstrung, burning with a sense of fierce anger against the injustice of her summary condemnation, had faced the Principal almost like an animal at bay, and defying her utterly, had persisted in sticking without deviation to her own version of the story. "You'll gain nothing by this obstinacy!" stormed Miss Poppleton. "I'll make you see who is in authority here! Do you actually imagine I shall allow a girl like you to set herself against the head of the school? Here you stay until you own the truth and beg my pardon." "Then I'll stop here till I'm grown up, for I've told the truth already," returned Gipsy desperately.