"Very sorry, but I've got to go straight home too. Some cousins are coming to tea, and I have to ask Miss Evans to let me out of the drawing class ten minutes earlier. Why not get Emma to go? We shall have to see her to give her her tip." "A good idea," said Gwen. "Emma understands all about it." They found the housemaid when she was helping to lay the tables for dinner, and managed to draw her aside for a private talk. "Did the fresh china come last night?" they asked eagerly. "Oh, yes! it came all right, and Miss Roscoe never said a word, so you may think yourselves lucky," replied Emma. "Here's the little present we promised you," said Netta, slipping the five shillings into her hand. "I hardly like taking it!" protested Emma, though she popped it hastily into her pocket all the same. "Could you do something more for us?" begged Gwen. "Will you call at Parker's and pay for the broken china? Here's the money--it's one pound two and six. Neither Netta nor I can possibly go." "Oh, yes, I don't mind doing that!" returned Emma. "It's my night out this evening, and I shall be down High Street, so I can easily call at Parker's on my road. They don't close till eight o'clock." "And you promise you'll never breathe a single word to anybody about this?" "Not likely!" declared Emma, as she turned away to finish laying her table. "Well, I'm thankful that's done with," thought Gwen. "It might have been an awkward affair, and I've come out of it uncommonly well. I feel as if I'd laid a ghost, and popped a stone on its grave." It was all very well for Gwen to congratulate herself, but she quite forgot that ghosts have an awkward habit sometimes of disregarding tombstones, and rising from their graves to haunt those who have interred them. The matter of the broken china was not to be so easily disposed of as she had imagined, and though for the present her secret seemed safe, there was trouble ahead for her in plenty. CHAPTER V Trouble in the Fifth The direct result of Gwen's transaction about the china was to fling her into the arms of Netta Goodwin. With such a secret between them it was impossible not to be friendly, and though Netta was hardly an ideal chum, there seemed no choice in the matter. Moreover, she was the only one in the Fifth who had offered advances; the other girls, still indignant at the promotion of a Junior, turned the cold shoulder. This unfortunate intimacy caused Gwen to be banned the more. "I see Gwen Gascoyne has taken up with Netta Goodwin," said Hilda Browne. "Then that stamps her," replied Edith Arnold. "I wouldn't touch Netta with a pair of tongs myself. I thought better of the Gascoynes!"