“You will have to get some one else to umpire for a time,” she said, as she rose from her seat and laid the score book down beside Gwen Morley. “Miss Skimmers has sent word that she wants to see me at once.” She was unspeakably glad to get out of the heat and the blinding glare of the sun, and she walked away instantly, going straight to the cool, shadowy, little room where Miss Skimmers passed her hours of relaxation, and where the maid had told her that lady was waiting for her. She opened the door and walked in--wondering the while what she was going to be taken to task for now; a summons to Miss Skimmers’ presence usually meaning that. She was not at all surprised when she beheld that large plethoric female pacing the room in a state of violent excitement and wheezing like an asthmatical dragon. “Shameful, I call it, Miss Vance!” she blurted out, without any preface, as Dora came into the room. “After all the sacrifices I have made for you, after all the consideration I have shown you both! And in the middle of the term, too, without a word of notice or a chance to supply the vacancy”--her voice rising to a sort of shriek, as she flung her unwieldy body about the room. “Shameful, I call it; outrageous, I call it, and wanting in all respect, all decency, all consideration for me.” “If you will tell me what all this is the prelude to, Miss Skimmers, perhaps I shall be able to understand what you mean,” said Dora, in that calm, low, reposeful voice, which was one of nature’s birth gifts to her, and which even fourteen years in the Skimmers’ establishment had not been able to destroy. “Will you tell me, please, what has happened and let me draw my own conclusions with regard to what you are pleased to term the ‘shamefulness’ of it; I suppose it has something to do with me, or you would not have sent for me.” “It has everything to do with you,” cried Miss Skimmers, in what Dora, in unholy moments of secret mirth, was wont to call her “here’s your fine cauliflowers and nice fresh radishes” voice. “It has everything to do with you and with that inconsiderate person, your mother.” “My mother? Let us leave that phantom out of the matter, Miss Skimmers. I am eighteen years of age--or I shall be in a month--and it is hardly complimentary to my intelligence to expect me to have faith in fairy tales now.” “I don’t know what you mean,” said Miss Skimmers. “You were always a queer girl, and I never could understand you. I dare say that your mother is like you, or she wouldn’t be treating me in this shameful way and sending for you in the middle of the term and not giving me a moment’s notice to get some one to fill your place.” Dora’s head swam and she staggered a little as though the heat had overcome her. “My mother,” she said faintly. “You say that my mother has sent for--oh, Miss Skimmers, are you losing your senses or am I? My mother? Mine? She exists? And has sent for me? Oh, Miss Skimmers, is it really true?”