“Quite true,” Grace replied, but she thought to herself that a great deal of unhappiness might have been avoided if Miss Post had only forgotten.

The talk drifted into other channels.  Miss Post told Grace that she expected to sail for Europe as soon as school was over.  In the fall she would return and enter Wellesley.  She had crossed the ocean once before, and had done the continent.  This time she intended to spend all of her time in Germany.  Grace decided her new acquaintance to be a remarkably bright girl.  At any other time she would have listened to her with absorbed interest, but try as she might, Grace could not focus her attention on what was being said.  One thought was uppermost in her mind, that Miriam was the real culprit.

What was to be done about it?  She would gain nothing by exposing Miriam to her classmates.  There had been too much unpleasantness already.  If there was only some way that Miriam could be brought to see the folly of her present course.  Grace decided to tell Anne the news that night and ask her advice.

CHAPTER XXI

ANNE AND GRACE COMPARE NOTES

During the walk home from the links, Grace kept continually thinking, “I knew it was Miriam.  She gave them to Julia.”  She replied rather absent-mindedly to Miss Post’s comments, and left the older girl with the impression that Miss Harlowe was not as interesting as she had at first seemed.

Grace escaped from the supper table at the earliest opportunity, and seizing her hat, made for Anne’s house as fast as her feet would take her.  Anne opened the door for her.

“Oh, Anne, Anne!  You never can guess what I know!” cried Grace, before she was fairly inside the house.

“Of course, I can’t,” replied Anne, “any more than you can guess what I know.”

“Why, do you know something special, too?” demanded Grace.

“I do, indeed.  But tell me your news first, and then I’ll tell you mine,” said Anne, pushing Grace into a chair.

“Mine’s about Miriam,” said Grace soberly.

“So is mine,” was the reply, “and it’s nothing creditable, either.”

“Well,” began Grace, “you know I went over to the golf links to-day with Ethel Post of the senior class.”

Anne nodded.

“We were sitting on a bench resting after the game, and the subject of basketball came up.  Before I knew it, she was telling me all about finding the list of signals you lost last fall.  She gave them to one of our class, you can guess who.”

“Miriam,” said Anne.

“Yes, it was Miriam.  I always suspected that she had more to do with it than anyone else.  She gave Julia the signals, because she wanted to see me humiliated, and fastened suspicion on you to shield herself.  She knew that I had boasted, openly, that my team would win.  When Julia gave me the statement that cleared you in the eyes of the girls, she told me that she was under promise not to tell how she obtained the signals.  But I’m sure she knew that I suspected Miriam.  What do you think we ought to do about it?”