Perhaps the newspaper would not be mentioned after all. If it were she would simply say she had been preparing for Monday and was going to read it after supper. Anyhow there was never any threat with the Pernes of anything she would not be able to deal with. She glanced to see what there was to eat, and then, feeling Miss Haddie’s eye from across the table, assumed an air of interested abstraction to cover her disappointment. Cold white blancmange in a round dish garnished with prunes, bread and butter, a square of cream cheese on a green-edged dessert plate, a box of plain biscuits, the tall bottle of lime juice and the red glass jug of water. Nothing really sweet and nice--the blancmange would be flavoured with laurel--prussic acid--and the prunes would be sweet in the wrong sort of way--wholesome, just sweet fruit. Cheese--how could people eat cheese? “Well, my dear, I tell you only what I saw with my own eyes--Polly Allen and Eunice Dupont running about in the park without their hats.” “Ech,” syphoned Miss Haddie, drawing her delicate green-grey eyebrows sharply towards the deep line in the middle of her forehead. She did not look up but sat frowning sourly into her bowl of bread and milk, ladling and pouring the milk from the spoon. Miriam kept a nervous eye on her acid preoccupation. No one had seen the behaviour of her own face, how one corner of her mouth had shot up so sharply as to bring the feeling of a deeply denting dimple in her cheek. She sat regulating her breathing and carefully extracting the stone from a prune. “Did ye speak to them?” asked Miss Jenny, fixing her tall sister over her pince-nez. Miss Perne sat smilingly upright, her black eyes blinking rapidly at the far-off bookshelves. “I did _not_ speak to them----” “Eh, Deborah, why not?” scolded Miss Jenny as Miss Perne drew breath. “I did _not_ speak to them,” went on Miss Deborah, beaming delightedly at the bookcase, “for the very good reason that I was not sufficiently near to them. I was walking upon the asphalt pathway surrounding the lake and had just become engaged in conversation with Mrs. Brinkwell, who had stopped me for the purpose of giving me further details with regard to Constance’s prolonged absence from school, when I saw Polly and Eunice apparently chasing one another across the recreation ground in the condition I have described to you.” Miriam, who had felt Miss Haddie’s scorn-filled eyes playing watchfully over her, sat pressing the sharp edge of her high heel into her ankle. “Eh, my dear, what a pity you couldn’t speak to them. They’ve no business at all in the recreation ground where the rough boys go.” “Well, I have described to you the circumstances, my dear, and the impossibility of my undertaking any kind of intervention.”