The result of the investigation was at first consoling, and then amazing.

They discovered that the bunches of violets were ordered at a smart down town florist by the girl herself, and by her order delivered at the school door by a liveried messenger boy, who, by her orders, awaited her arrival.  As for the closed carriage, that she also bespoke herself at a smart livery stable where she was known.  When she entered it, she was at once driven to the Park Street station, where she bought a round trip ticket to Waltham.  There she walked to the river, hired a boat, rowed herself up stream, tied her boat at a wooden bank, climbed the slope, and sat there all the afternoon, sometimes reading, and sometimes merely staring out at the river, or up at the sky.  At sunset she rowed back to the town, returned to the city, and walked from the station to her home.

This all seemed simple enough, but it puzzled the father, it made him unquiet in his mind.  Why all this mystery?  Why—­well, why a great many things, for of course the Principal Girl had to prepare for these absences, and, although the little fibs she told were harmless enough—­well, why?  The literature teacher, who had been watching her carefully, had her theory.  She knew a lot about girls.  Wasn’t she once one herself?  So it was by her advice that the family doctor was taken into the family confidence, chiefly because neither father nor mother had the pluck to tackle the matter—­they were ashamed to have their daughter know that she had been caught in even a small deception—­it seemed so like intruding into her intimate life.

There are parents like that, you know.

The doctor had known the girl since he ushered her into the world.  If there were any one with whom she had shown the slightest sign of intimacy, it was with him.  Like all doctors whose associations are so largely with women, and who are moderately intelligent and temperamental, he knew a great deal about the dangers of the imagination.  No one ever heard just what passed between the two.  One thing is pretty sure, he made no secrets regarding the affair, and at the end of the interview he advised the parents to take the girl out of school, take her abroad, keep her active, present her at courts, show her the world, keep her occupied, interest her, keep her among people whether she liked it or not.

The literature teacher counted for something in the affair, and I imagine that it was never talked over between the parents and daughter, who soon after left town for Europe, and for three years were not seen in Boston.

When they did return, it was to announce the marriage of the Principal Girl to the son of the family lawyer, a clever man, and a rising politician.

Relations between the literature teacher and the Principal Girl had never wholly broken off, so ten years after the school adventure it happened one beautiful day in early September that the teacher was a guest at the North Shore summer home of the Principal Girl, now the mother of two handsome boys.