The girl listened to this speech with evident surprise; yet the tirade did not seem to impress her.

“You refuse, then, to let me go?” she returned.

“I positively refuse.”

“But I cannot stay here, Miss Stearne,” she protested.

“You must.  I have always treated you kindly—­I treat all my girls well if they deserve it—­but you are developing a bad disposition, Mary Louise—­a most reprehensible disposition, I regret to say—­and the tendency must be corrected at once.  Not another word!  Go to your room.”

Mary Louise went to her room, greatly depressed by the interview.  She looked at her trunk, made a mental inventory of its highly prized contents, and sighed.  But as soon as she rejoined Gran’pa, Jim, she reflected, he would send an order to have the trunk forwarded and Miss Stearne would not dare refuse.  For a time she must do without her pretty gowns.

Instead of studying her text books she studied the railway time-card.  She had intended asking Miss Stearne to permit her to take the five-thirty train from Beverly Junction the next morning and since the recent interview she had firmly decided to board that very train.  This was not entirely due to stubbornness, for she reflected that if she stayed at the school her unhappy condition would become aggravated, instead of improving, especially since Miss Stearne had developed unexpected sharpness of temper.  She would endure no longer the malicious taunts of her school fellows or the scoldings of the principal, and these could be avoided in no other way than by escaping as she had planned.

At ten o’clock she lay down upon her bed, fully dressed, and put out her light; but she dared not fall asleep lest she miss her train.  At times she lighted a match and looked at her watch and it surprised her to realize how long a night can be when one is watching for daybreak.

At four o’clock she softly rose, put on her hat, took her suit case in hand and stealthily crept from, the room.  It was very dark in the hallway but the house was so familiar to her that she easily felt her way along the passage, down the front stairs and so to the front door.

Miss Stearne always locked this door at night but left the key in the lock.  To-night the key had been withdrawn.  When Mary Louise had satisfied herself of this fact she stole along the lower hallway toward the rear.  The door that connected with the dining room and farther on with the servants’ quarters had also been locked and the key withdrawn.  This was so unusual that it plainly told the girl that Miss Stearne was suspicious that she might try to escape, and so had taken precautions to prevent her leaving the house.

Mary Louise cautiously set down her suit case and tried to think what to do.  The house had not been built for a school but was an old residence converted to school purposes.  On one side of the hall was a big drawing-room; on the other side were the principal’s apartments.