Strange to say, Miss Pew did not look grateful to the bearer of evil
tidings. This was one of her idiosyncrasies. She insisted upon being kept
informed of all that went wrong in her establishment, but she was apt to
be out of temper with the informant.

'Neither,' answered Miss Pillby, with an awful shake of her sandy locks;
'I don't believe there is a servant in this house who would so far forget
herself. And as to the pupils--'

'We know what they are,' snapped Miss Pew; 'I never heard of anything bad
enough to be beyond their reach. Who is it?'

'Your clever pupil teacher, Ida Palliser.'

'Ah,' grunted Miss Pew, setting down her cup; 'I can believe anything of
her. That girl was born to be troublesome. What has she done now?'

Miss Pillby related the circumstances of Miss Palliser's crime setting
forth her own cleverness in the course of her narrative--how her
misgivings had been excited by the unwonted familiarity between Ida and
the Fraeulein--a young person always open to suspicion as a stranger in
the land--how her fears had been confirmed by the conduct of an unknown
man in the church; and how, urged by her keen sense of duty, she had
employed Mrs. Jones's boy to watch the delinquents.

'I'll make an example of her,' said Miss Pew, flinging back the
bed-clothes with a tragic air as she rose from her couch. 'That will do,
Pillby. I want no further details. I'll wring the rest out of that
bold-faced minx in the face of all the school. You can go.'