Kathleen pushed past Ruth and ran up to Susy.  Susy was looking intensely agitated:  there were vivid spots of color on her cheeks, and her eyes were as bright as stars.

“I have managed everything,” she said in a whisper.  “It’s all right; it’s splendidly right.  We are all coming; not one of us will stay behind.  We know what it means, of course.”

“You look very mysterious,” said Kathleen.  “I wonder why you talk like that.  What does it mean, in your opinion?”

“Oh, Kathleen, can’t you understand?  And one does it sometimes in life.  I have read about it in story-books, and there are cases of it in history; you have one great tremendous fling; you do what is wrong; you have a good—­a very good—­time, and you know it won’t last; you know that afterwards will come—­the deluge.”

“You are a silly!” said Kathleen.  “Why, what could happen?  Nobody need know; we will be far too careful for that.  I can’t tell you how splendidly I have planned things.  I have got up my headache already, in order to go to my room and thus avoid all suspicion.”

“Oh dear!” said Susy.  “It doesn’t sound right, does it?”

“Right or wrong, it is fun,” said Kathleen.  “I am going to have it so.  I have got the money, and I mean to have a magnificent time.  Now don’t keep me; I must run into school.  It is horrid of them to grudge us our little bit of amusement.”

Susy agreed with her friend; indeed, during those days she was nearly lifted off her feet, so excited was she, so charmed, so altogether amazed at Kathleen O’Hara’s condescension to her.  Before Kathleen arrived at the school Susy was a good little girl, who helped her mother in the shop, and had dreams of going into another shop herself by-and-by.  In those days she did not consider herself a lady, nor expect ladies to take any special notice of her.  But those dull and stupid days were no more.  Gold and sunshine and rich color and marvellous dreams had all come into her life since the arrival of Kathleen at Merrifield.  For Kathleen had discrimination; it mattered nothing to her whether a girl paid or did not pay for her lessons, whether she belonged to the despised foundationers or was respected and looked up to by paying girls.  Indeed, if anything, Kathleen had a decided leaning towards the foundationers; and she, Kathleen, was a lady—­she belonged to what her mother and Aunt Church called the “real quality.”  “None of your upstarts,” Aunt Church had said, “but one who for generations has belonged to the aristocrats; and they are of the kind who are too great in themselves to be proud.  They are proud in the right way, but they never look down on folks.”  Yes, Susy was a happy girl now.