She would _never_ come back if they thought she cheated! As in a dream she mounted the stairs and rounded the hall toward the office of the a.s.sistant princ.i.p.al. Several pupils were about the central hall, some of them leaving the office toward which she was making her way. Jakey Bechstein was slapping a cap upon his quite good-looking head and starting for the big outer doors with two companions. His big dark eyes were upon the nearest boy and he did not see Betty, though he closely pa.s.sed her.

"What did he say to you, Jakey?" the boys was asking. It was one of the other freshman boys.

"'Lo, Betty, going home?" asked a girl behind her. Betty turned and waved pleasantly to the girl, whom she knew slightly. "Not now, Adelaidesorry. I have to stop at the office a minute."

"Been into mischief, I suppose," laughed Adelaide.

"Of course," returned Betty, knowing that Adelaide was only in fun. But alas, it was only too true that something was wrong.

As Betty entered the office a boy was just leaving the desk, going out with tense mouth and a frown. But the a.s.sistant princ.i.p.al looked up in a friendly way at Betty, whose face showed plainly her troubled mind.

"Sit down, Betty. This is Betty Lee, I suppose." Mr. Franklin, who as a.s.sistant princ.i.p.al usually saw all the offenders in school discipline before his chief, now came from behind his desk and drew up a chair not far from Betty's. He looked tired as he stretched out a pair of long legs, crossed his feet and leaned back, one hand reaching the desk, the other dropped in his lap. Here was only an innocent-looking child, whom he did not recall meeting.

"Yes, sir; I am Betty Lee. Miss Masterman told me that I was to come here."

"M-m. Tell you why you were to come?"

"She said that she thought II cheated in examination."

The tears which Betty thought she would be able to keep back sprang quickly to her eyes, but she set her lips, wiped her eyes hastily, and continued. "But I did not cheat and I did not see it if the whole room cheated. I tried to make a good paper for Miss Heath!"

"You like Miss Heath, do you?"

"Oh, yes sir! If she had only" Betty stopped, for she would not imply anything against the subst.i.tute.

"Sometimes it is a temptation to try to do well for some one." Mr.

Franklin was looking at her kindly, but soberly.

"I've been taught that it is wrong to cheat, sir; and I don't believe it pays in the long run. Father says that the teacher usually finds out what you know or don't know."

"Usually, but not always when there are so many. Tell me about it, Betty."

"But there isn't anything to tell! I can't think why anybody _thinks_ I cheated. I worked hard on the review and went over the things I was weakest on, I thought, and ran over the vocabulary we've had, the night before. But I'm pretty good on vocabulary."

"Girls sometimes are," joked Mr. Franklin, at which Betty took heart.

"Won't you tell me what happened, Mr. Franklin, to make her think I cheated?"

"Not yet. Near whom did you sit, Betty?"

"Why, Dora Jenkins sits in front of me; and on the aisle next, to the right, Mickey Carlin is across from Dora and Sim, James Simmonds, I mean, sits across from me and on the other aisle, across from me, there's Sally Wright, a colored girl, and Peggy Pollard back of her. The alphabet is all mixed up in this cla.s.s."

"Who is back of you?"

"Andyoh, no, Mr. Franklin, it was all different that day. I remember the boys changedbut I shouldn't tell you!"

"Go on. One of the boys told me that they changed seats for fun on the day you had a subst.i.tute and it was not an exactly criminal act, though I don't stand for it. Then they didn't change back?"

"I suppose they thought they'd better not since she had seen them there, though I imagine Miss Heath's roll is made out that way."

"Never mind. Haven't you the least remembrance who sat behind you or to the side back?"

"Seems to me it was Jakey Bechstein behind me and the boys seemed to be all mixed up around there. But I wasn't thinking about it."

"Did you leave your seat at any time?"

Betty thought. "Yes sir. I have an extra fountain pen and I thought I'd better fill it when I was partly through. But the ink at the desk was out. Then the ink in my pen that I was using gave out and I went up, twice, to sharpen pencils, thinking that I would need sharp points to make it legible enough for Miss Heath. She is always talking about our making our test papers especially legible."

Mr. Franklin smiled. "Sensible woman. Well, Betty, I will tell you that there are three papers almost exactly alike and one of them is yours. Do you suspect any one of copying from you?"

"No, sir. If Jakey was where he could do it, he would never have to because he is as smart as any one in the cla.s.s and almost never doesn't have his lesson."

"In other words, he almost always does," smiled Mr. Franklin. "I am afraid we can not go by the usual order of seats, but I am finding out where the persons involved sat. You will admit that where papers are so alike there is room for suspicion."

"Yes, sir. Is Miss Masterson correcting, or will Miss Heath do it?"

"Miss Masterson has read the papers carefully and discovered the similarity. Miss Heath will be back tomorrow. Every one has denied copying."

Betty looked at Mr. Franklin and shook her head soberly. "Of course,"

she said, "and I'm only one of them, I suppose. Well, Mr. Franklin, I'm not going to stay in school if any one thinks I'm that kind of a girl!"

"Do you think that you would be allowed to drop out, Betty? Think this over tonight and come to see me tomorrow at the same time. I may have more light on itand you may think of something to tell me."

Betty flushed at this. He meant if she had some confession to make! But Mr. Franklin was rising. She was dismissed, she saw. "I will come," she said and went out, out of the main doors, too, down the steps, on to catch a street car home.

All the way Betty sat almost unconscious of the other people on the car, for at the first glance she saw no one whom she knew. From the first the incidents of the last few hours and those of the examination went through her mind. She tried to gather up a few fleeting impressions.

Yes, it was Jakey who sat behind her, though it was unusual to see him there. That was why she could recall it, she supposed. He had grinned at her as she came back from the pencil sharpener. And there had been some whisking of something somewhere, just before Peggy had been seen to glare at one of the boys. That was probably what he was doing, taking something from her desk or teasing her in some way. My, it was a puzzle.

But it was simply terrible to be under suspicion. Could it really be Betty Lee that was going through this? And the old nursery rhyme ran through her head:

"But when the old woman got home in the dark, Up jumped the little dog and he began to bark!

He began to bark And she began to cry, 'Goodness, mercy on me, this is none of I!'"

When she reached home she tried to say this to her dear mother, who was sitting by the window mending an almost hopeless stocking of Amy Lou's.

But when she got to the "this is none of I," her lips quivered and she ran to bury her head in the comfortable lap and sob out the story as soon as she could control herself sufficiently. Here was some one who would take her word!

"Dear child, dear child!" soothingly said her mother. "Don't take it too seriously. I know how hard it is when a young person cannot justify herself to schoolmates or friends, but surely you have already made a good impression on your teachers. Don't you think that when Miss Heath comes back tomorrow she will handle the matter? You said that the a.s.sistant princ.i.p.al is well liked and that the pupils think him fair. I think that they will probe the matter a little farther."

"But what more can they _do_?" asked Betty from the floor, her head against her mother's knee. "There are those three papers just alike!"

"And you wrote yours out of your own head. Stick to that. Besides, your father and I believe in you. Haven't we seen your lips moving in all the declensions and conjugations so far, while you committed them, and haven't I asked you more than once the Latin or English words of your vocabularies?"

"You have, sweetest mother that there is!" Betty drew a long sigh.

"Anyhow it doesn't do any good to weep and wail, does it? I believe I'll call up Peggy and see what she knows and tell her my tale of woe. I didn't tell you that she had to stay after school, too, and got asked questions."

"Are you sure that you'd better, child?"

"Call Peggy? oh, yes, Mother. Peggy would be sure to ask me tomorrow morning what Miss Masterson said. I'll bet she's aching to call me up right now!"

Mrs. Lee's face grew serious as soon as Betty left her to call up her friend. She was more disturbed by Betty's news than she would have admitted to the child herself. Betty was so comparatively new to the school with no background of long acquaintance as in the old school. She had more than half a mind to go to school with her tomorrow. But she thought better of that. Let them work it out first. If necessary, she or Betty's father would go to see the princ.i.p.al.