"Don't equivocate! You _threw_ it"--sternly.

"All right; I threw it"--defiantly.

"Why did you do it?"

"To wake up the cla.s.s. If you knew how dull that hour is you wouldn't blame me."

"Don't be impertinent!"

"Miss Marshall is a fool. If you ask her a question outside the lesson she has to look it up in the book."

"You are not here to criticize your teachers, you are here to account for your misbehaviour."

"I am telling you why I misbehave. I can't listen to her. n.o.body does.

She sets us all wild. Everybody was half asleep so I bounced the lamp on the floor. She ought to have been grateful to me for getting their attention."

"This is the second time this week that you have been reported for insubordination. This conduct cannot continue. I am writing your parents to-day that unless you mend your ways, they must take you away from here. You are contaminating the entire school."

"They can't take me away too quickly."

Miss Vantine thought best to ignore this impertinence.

"You will take twenty demerits, and miss your walk in the park for a week. You may go now."

The girl sauntered insolently out of the room, leaving Miss Vantine white with rage. She wrote a very firm letter to Mrs. Walter Bryce, who in turn wrote a denunciatory letter to her daughter, and there the matter rested.

One disgrace followed another, and finally the school year dragged to a close. Isabelle went to The Beeches for the summer. There were four months of war to the knife with her mother, the usual number of sc.r.a.pes, and a violent love affair with Herbert Hunter, home from St. George's.

"What became of your reformed character?" inquired Wally one day. "I thought the Benjamins had made a human being of you."

"They nearly did. But Max dragged me off and sent me to that fool Vantine, and I got over being human. What's the use?"

The Bryces were glad when fall came and she was sent back to the school.

As for Isabelle she did not much care where she went. There was a certain satisfaction--an _esprit de diablerie_--which amused her. Sharp of tongue and of wit, she knew she had a real gift for making herself a nuisance, and she took pride in it.

Miss Vantine warned her at the beginning of the term that she was a marked character, and that unless she behaved herself she could not stay. She tempered her behaviour somewhat during the first term, but it was no use. Like every dog with a bad name, all the mischief in the school was attributed to her. According to schoolgirl canons of loyalty it was an unforgivable sin to tell tales or "give people away," so Isabelle shouldered the iniquity of the whole school. The teachers hated and feared her.

Miss Vantine bore with her like a martyr--for two reasons. One was that she liked Mrs. Bryce, who had been her pupil; and the other was that she had never yet expelled a girl, and she disliked the idea intensely.

But there came a day in early February of Isabelle's second year of residence when the end was reached. Herbert Hunter had smuggled a note to her that he was coming to New York to have his tonsils out and he wanted to see her before he went to the hospital. She answered by special delivery and agreed to meet him on Sunday, in the Park. When the girls were entering church on that day, Isabelle was taken with a violent fit of coughing, and was left in the vestibule to quiet herself.

She fled to her tryst. But she miscalculated the length of the sermon, and met the school coming out, on the church steps. She was questioned, led home in disgrace. She was accused of truancy; she admitted it, even confessed her rendezvous in the Park.

Miss Vantine had to act this time. She sent a final letter to the Bryces with a sentence of suspension for their daughter, who was packed off home at once, in disgrace. Mrs. Bryce was furious because she and Wally were going off with the Abercrombie Brendons on their yacht. She explained their dilemma to their hostess and she was decent enough to include the girl, but it was a nuisance to have her along.

No time was lost in letting Isabelle feel her disgrace. After a perfunctory greeting, her mother remarked:

"You've made a nice record for yourself, haven't you?"

Isabelle made no reply.

"Why don't you answer me?"

"Foolish question, Number One. Yes, I have made a nice record for myself."

"If you make yourself a nuisance around here, I shall find a way to punish you," she threatened her.

"Go ahead. Get it all off your chest at once and then drop it."

Mrs. Bryce decided upon injured dignity, as her best role.

"Where's Wally?" demanded Isabelle.

"I don't know."

"What's doing around here? I expect to enjoy myself on this little vacation. I hope you don't intend to be too disagreeable."

Later at dinner Wally remarked to his wife--

"Tell her about the trip?"

"No."

"What trip?" demanded their daughter.

"We are going off on the Abercrombie Brendons' yacht, and your unfortunate return has forced Mrs. Brendon to include you in the party."

"I hope you said 'No, thanks' for me."

"We said 'yes' for you," replied Wally.

"But I won't go. Shut up on a boat with you two and the Brendons? Not much."

"You're not being consulted," remarked her mother, coolly.

"You'll have to drag me aboard."

Mrs. Bryce's temper flared.

"You will walk aboard and you will behave like a decent individual while we are on this cruise, or there will be the most serious consequences you have ever met yet. n.o.body wants you on this party, you understand, and the less conspicuous you make yourself, the better."

Isabelle beamed upon them.

"Thank you so much for your charming invitation, my dear, doting parents. I accept with pleasure, and I think I can promise you that your little outing will be a complete success, so far as I am concerned."

She laughed lightly, and Mr. and Mrs. Bryce exchanged uneasy glances.

Something in that laugh did not promise well for their holiday.