The disagreeable secret had begun
to spread; all the children would relate the events of yesterday in
their own homes; to pass the thing over was impossible. She
sincerely regretted the step she must take, and to which she would
not have felt herself driven by any ill-placed prudery of her own.
On Monday morning it must be stated to the girls that Ida Starr had
left.
In the meantime, it only remained to write to Mrs. Starr, and make
known this determination. Miss Rutherford thought for a little while
of going to see Ida's mother, but felt that this would be both
painful and useless. It was difficult even to write, desirous as she
was of somehow mitigating the harshness of this sentence of
expulsion. After half-an-hour spent in efforts to pen a suitable
note, she gave up the attempt to write as she would have wished, and
announced the necessity she was under in the fewest possible words.
CHAPTER II
MOTHER AND CHILD
Ida Starr, dismissed by the schoolmistress, ran quickly homewards.
She was unusually late, and her mother would be anxious. Still, when
she came within sight of the door, she stopped and stood panting.
How should she tell of her disgrace? It was not fear that made her
shrink from repeating Miss Rutherford's message; nor yet shame,
though she would gladly have hidden herself away somewhere in the
dark from every eye; her overwhelming concern was for the pain she
knew she was going to cause one who had always cherished her with
faultless tenderness,--tenderness which it had become her nature
to repay with a child's unreflecting devotion.
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