“Oh, do!”

“Moth-er!”

Gwendolyn’s mother looked down.  A sudden color was mounting to her cheeks.  Her eyes shone.

“We-e-ell,” she said, with rising inflection.

It was acceptance.

Gwendolyn stepped back the pink muslin in a nervous grasp at either side.  “Oh, won’t you stay?” she half-whispered.

“Mother’ll see you at dinnertime, darling.  Tell Jane, Miss Royle.”

A bow.

Louise led the way quickly, followed by the elderly lady.  Gwendolyn’s mother came last.  A bronze gate slid between the three and Gwendolyn, watching them go.  The cage lowered noiselessly, with a last glimpse of upturned faces and waving hands.

Gwendolyn, lips pouting, crossed toward the school-room door.  The door was slightly ajar.  She gave it a smart pull.

A kneeling figure rose from behind it.  It was Jane, who greeted her with a nervous, and somewhat apprehensive grin.

“I was waitin’ to jump out at Miss Royle and give her a scare when she’d come through,” she explained.

Gwendolyn said nothing.

CHAPTER IV

It was a morning abounding in unexpected good fortune.  For one thing, Miss Royle was indisposed—­to an extent that was fully convincing—­and was lying down, brows swathed by a towel, in her own room; for another, the bursting of a hot-water pipe on the same floor as the nursery required the prompt attention of a man in a greasy cap and Johnnie Blake overalls, who, as he hammered and soldered and coupled lengths of piping with his wrench, discussed various grown-up topics in a loud voice with Jane, thus levying on her attention.  Miss Royle’s temporary incapacity set aside the program of study usual to each forenoon; and Jane’s suddenly aroused interest in plumbing made the canceling of that day’s riding-lesson seem advisable.  It was Thomas who telephoned the postponement.  And Gwendolyn found herself granted some little time to herself.

But she was not playing any of the games she loved—­the absorbing pretend-games with which she occupied herself on just such rare occasions.  Her own pleasure, her own disappointment, too,—­these were entirely put aside in a concern touching weightier matters.  Slippers upheld by a hassock, and slender pink-frocked figure bent across the edge of the school-room table, she had each elbow firmly planted on a page of the wide-open, dictionary.

At all times the volume was beguiling—­this in spite of the fact that the square of black-board always carried along its top, in glaring chalk, the irritating reminder:  Use Your Dictionary! There was diversion in turning the leaves at random (blissfully ignoring the while any white list that might be inscribed down the whole of the board) to chance upon big, strange words.

But the word she was now poring over was a small one.  “B-double-e,” she spelled; “Bee:  a so-cial hon-ey-gath-er-ing in-sect.”