“Then I’d like to ask you something.”

“Ask away, my little Ruth.  You are such a busy little maid now, what with your school, and what with your lessons, and what with that big scholarship—­sixty pounds a year.  Ah! we shall have a fine right side of the ledger when little Ruth has brought home sixty pounds a year.”

Ruth stifled a groan.

“I am rather puzzled,” she said, “and I want to put a question to you.”

“Yes, my darling; I am prepared to listen.”

“I know a girl,” said Ruth after a pause—­she thought that she would tell her story that way—­“I know a girl at school, and she has been kindly treated.  She is one of the foundation girls, but some of the girls who are not foundationers have singled her out and been specially good to her.”

“Eh, eh!  Well, that’s good of them,” said old Mr. Craven.

“They have been very good to her; but that Irish girl whom I told you about, she started a society—­no special harm in itself—­at least it didn’t seem harm to the girl I have been telling you about, and she joined it.  She joined it for a bit, and she liked it—­that is, on the whole—­but afterwards a girl who had not joined the society and did not belong to the foundationers, one whom I am sorry to say the foundationers did not care for at all, offered a great kindness to this girl—­a very special and tremendous kindness—­and the girl in her own mind decided that she would be doing wrong not to accept it.  So she did accept it, and—­Are you listening, grandfather?”

“Indeed I am, little maid.  Go on, my child; I’m attending to every word.”

“The girl decided to accept the kindness from the paying girl, and to do that she had to give up the society.  She was sorry to give it up, but it seemed to her that it was the only right and honorable thing to do.  She could not belong to both—­to one side of the school and to the other; she must take her stand with one or the other; so she decided for her own special benefit to take her stand with the paying girls.”

“On the whole, perhaps, she was right,” said the old man.  “Can’t say unless I know everything; but on the whole, perhaps, she was right.”

“I think she was, grandfather,” said Ruth slowly.  “But now please listen.  The head-mistress at the school and the governors have found out about the secret society.  They have found out that it exists, but they don’t know much more.  They know, however, that its influence is bad in the school, and they are determined to crush it out.  In order to do this they must get full particulars.  They must get the name of the leader.  I am afraid that they know the name of the leader, but they must also get the names of her companions—­all the names—­and as much as possible of the rules of the society.  Now the only girl not a member of the society who can give those particulars is the girl I have been talking about; for, of course, she knows, as she belonged to it at one time although she has now left it.  And the governors and the head-mistress sent for this girl and asked her to betray her companions—­those girls to whom she had sworn fealty—­and the girl refused.”