“Mary Louise is all right,” asserted Jennie Allen stoutly.  “She isn’t to blame, at all.”

“I warned you that her goody-goody airs were a cloak to hidden wickedness,” said Mable, tossing her head.

“Blood will tell,” drawled Lina Darrow, a very fat girl.  “Mary Louise has bad blood in her veins and it’s bound to crop out, sooner or later.  I advise you girls to keep your trunks locked and to look after your jewelry.”

“Shame—­shame!” cried Dorothy Knerr, and the others echoed the reproach.  Even Mable looked at fat Lina disapprovingly.

However, in spite of staunch support on the part of her few real friends, Mary Louise felt from that hour a changed atmosphere when in the presence of her school fellows.  Weeks rolled by without further public attacks upon Gran’pa Jim, but among the girls at the school suspicion had crept in to ostracize Mary Louise from the general confidence.  She lost her bright, cheery air of self-assurance and grew shy and fearful of reproach, avoiding her schoolmates more than they avoided her.  Instead of being content in her new home, as she had hoped to be, the girl found herself more miserable and discontented than at any other period of her life.  She longed continually to be comforted by Gran’pa Jim and Mamma Bee, and even lost interest in her studies, moping dismally in her room when she should have been taking an interest in the life at the school.

Even good Miss Stearne had unconsciously changed in her attitude toward the forlorn girl.  Deciding one day that she needed some new shoes, Mary Louise went to the principal to ask for the money with which to buy them.

Miss Stearne considered the matter seriously.  Then she said with warning emphasis: 

“My dear, I do not think it advisable for you to waste your funds on shoes, especially as those you have are in fairly good condition.  Of course, your grandfather left some money with me, to be expended as I saw fit, but now that he has abscon—­eh—­eh—­secreted himself, so to speak, we can expect no further remittances.  When this term is ended any extra money should be applied toward your further board and tuition.  Otherwise you would become an outcast, with no place to go and no shelter for your head.  That, in common decency, must be avoided.  No; I do not approve of any useless expenditures.  I shall hoard this money for future emergencies.”

In happier times Mary Louise would have been indignant at the thought that her grandfather would ever leave her unprovided for, but she had been so humbled of late that this aspect of her affairs, so candidly presented by Miss Stearne, troubled her exceedingly.  She had written a letter every week to her grandfather, addressing it, as he had instructed her to do, in care of Mr. Peter Conant at Dorfield.  And always she had stolen out, unobserved, and mailed the letter at the village post office.  Of course she had never by a single word referred to the scandal regarding the Colonel or her mother, or to her own unhappy lot at school because of that scandal, knowing how such a report would grieve them; but the curious thing about this correspondence was that it was distinctly one-sided.  In the three months since they had gone away, Mary Louise had never received an answer to any of her letters, either from her grandfather or her mother.