to have you here whenever it might suit you to come;
and I add to this message my entreaty that you will
come at once. You say that you think you ought to
leave Miss Prettyman's for a while. I can well
understand your feeling; but as your sister is with
your mother, surely you had better come to us--I mean
quite at once. I will not scruple to tell you what
mamma says, because I know your good sense. She says
that as the interest of the school may possibly be
concerned, and as you have no regular engagement, she
thinks you ought to leave Silverbridge; but she says
that it will be better that you come to us than that
you should go home. If you went home, people might
say that had left in some sort of disgrace. Come to
us, and when all this is put right, then you go back
to Silverbridge; and then, if a certain person speaks
again, you can make a different answer. Mamma quite
understands that you are to come; so you have only to
ask your own mamma, and come at once.'

This letter, the reader will understand, did not reach Grace Crawley
till after the all-important Thursday; but before that day had come
round, Grace had told Miss Prettyman--had told both the Miss
Prettymans--that she was resolved to leave them. She had done this
without consulting her mother, driven to it by various motives. She knew
her father's conduct was being discussed by the girls at school, and
that things were said of him which it could not but be for the
disadvantage of Miss Prettyman that anyone should say of a teacher in
the establishment. She felt, too, that she could not hold up her head in
Silverbridge in these days, as it would become her to do if she retained