For the Sake of the School by Angela Brazil (adventure books to read .TXT) 📗

fled with more regard for speed than safety along the veranda roof, and scrambled through the window into the linen-room again. She was trembling with agitation. Such an extraordinary development of the situation was as appalling as it was unexpected. She must have time to think it over. She could not bear to speak to anybody about it at present, not even to Lizzie. No, she must be alone. She ran quickly downstairs, and, before Lizzie had time to find her, dived under the laurels of the shrubbery and made her way first down the garden and then to the very bottom of the paddock that adjoined the high road. There was a little copse here, of trees and low bushes, which sheltered her from all observation. Nobody was likely to come and disturb her, for the girls preferred the glade, and seldom troubled to enter the paddock. She flung herself down on the grass and tried to face the matter calmly. She had begged Rona to confess, and Rona in return had accused her of taking the pendant. This was turning the tables with a vengeance. How could her room-mate have become possessed of such a preposterous idea? And in what a web of mystery the affair seemed involved! One certainty came as an immense relief. Rona was not guilty. More than this, she was behaving with an extraordinary amount of courage and loyalty.

"She believes I took it, and yet she is bearing all the blame, and shielding me for the sake of the school," groaned Ulyth. "Oh, what must she be thinking of me! We're all at cross-purposes. Did she really fancy that when I said: 'Remember the Camp-fire', I was begging her to screen me? Somebody took the pendant and put it in her pocket; that's the ugly part of the business. It's throwing the blame from one to another. What we've got to do is to find out the real guilty person, and that's not going to be easy, I'm afraid."

Ulyth sighed and wiped her eyes. She had been deeply hurt at Rona's sudden attack. It is humiliating to find that where you occupied a pedestal you are now, even temporarily, a broken idol.

"She's right to scorn me if she imagines I'm such a sneak, but how could she suppose I would? And yet I thought her guilty. Oh dear, it's a horrible muddle! How shall we ever get it straight?"

Ulyth sat thinking, thinking, and was no nearer to a solution of her problem when she suddenly heard the brisk ringing of a bicycle-bell on the road below. Springing up eagerly, she rushed to the wall, and shouted just in time to stop Mrs. Arnold, whose machine was whisking past.

"Hallo, Ulyth! What are you doing there?"

"I'm coming over. Do please wait for me!"

And Ulyth, scrambling somehow across the wall, slid down a gravelly bank on to the road.

"You're the one person in the world I want to see," she added, hugging her friend impetuously. "Oh, Mrs. Arnold, the most dreadful things have been happening at school! Somebody took Stephie's pendant, and it fell out of Rona's pocket, and everybody thinks Rona took it, and Rona thinks it's me. What are we to do?"

"Sit down here and tell me all about it. Yes, please, begin at the very beginning, and don't leave anything out, however trivial. Sometimes the little things are the most important. Cheer up, child! We'll get to the bottom of it, never fear."

Sitting on the bank, with Mrs. Arnold's arm round her, Ulyth related the whole of her story, mentioning every detail she could remember. It was such a comfort to pour it out into sympathetic ears, and to one whose judgment was more likely to be unbiased than that of anyone connected with the school.

"You always understand," she said, with a sigh of relief, as she kissed the hand that was holding hers.

"It certainly is a tangled skein to unravel; but, as it happens, I really believe I can throw a little light upon the matter. You say Rona told you that somebody came into her bedroom last night, and presumably hid the pendant in her blouse pocket?"

"Yes; and she was sure that somebody was myself."

"Then what we have to do is to produce the real culprit."

"If we can find her."

"Just now I was wheeling my bicycle up Tyn y Bryn Hill, and I met one of the boys from Jones's farm. He stopped me and handed me a letter. 'A girl gave it to me five minutes ago,' he said. 'She asked me if I was going to the village, and if I'd post it for her; so I promised I would. But it's addressed to you, so I may as well give it to you as post it, and save the stamp.' I read the letter, and it puzzled me extremely. I hardly knew what to make of it; but since you've told me about the pendant I think I begin to understand its meaning. You shall see it for yourself."

Mrs. Arnold spread out the letter on her knee, so that Ulyth might read it. It was written on village note-paper, in a childish hand, with no stops.

"DEAR MRS ARNOLD

"this comes hoping to find you as well as it leves me at present i am in dredful trubble and i cannot stay here eny longer dear Mrs Arnold after what cook said this afternoon i am sure she knows all and i daresunt tell miss Bowes but you are the camp fire lady and i feel i must say goodbye to ease your mind dear Mrs Arnold wen you get this letter I shall be Far Away as it says in the song you tort us by the stream and you will never see me agen but i shall think of you alwus and the camp fire and i wish i hadn't dun it only I was skared to deth for she said she wuld half kill me and she alwus