The girls talked a little longer and then parted. As Susy Hopkins was running home helter-skelter--for she wanted to get her lessons done in order to be fully in time for the meeting that evening--she met Ruth Craven. Ruth was walking slowly by with her usual demure and sweet expression.
"Hullo!" called out Susy. "We'll meet to-night, sha'n't we?"
"Aren't you coming? Why, you are sort of Prime Minister to the queen."
"You don't think it right really, do you," said Ruth--"not from the bottom of your heart, I mean?"
"Right or wrong, I mean to enjoy myself," said Susy Hopkins. "I suppose, if you come to analyse it, it is wrong, and not right. But, dear me, Ruth! what fun should we poor girls have if we were too particular on these points?"
"It always seems to me that it is worth while to do right," said Ruth.
"So you say, but I don't quite agree with you. You will come to-night, in any case, won't you?"
"Yes, I will come to-night; but I am not happy about it, and I wish Kathleen--Oh, I know it is very fascinating, and Kathleen is just delightful, but I should not like our teachers to know."
"Of course not," said Susy, staring at her. "They'd soon put a stop to it."
"Are you certain? I know so little about the school."
"Certain? I'm convinced. Why, they'd be furious. I expect we'd be expelled."
"Then that proves it. I didn't know there was any strict rule about it."
"Why, what are you made of, Ruth Craven?"
"I thought," said Ruth, "that when we were not in school we were our own mistresses."
"To a certain extent, of course; but we have what is called the school character to keep up. We have, as it were, to uphold the spirit of the school. Now the spirit of the school is quite against secrecy in any form. Oh dear, why will you drag all this out of me? I'd made up my mind not to think of it, and now you have forced me to say it. Of course you will come to-night. You have to think of Kathleen as well as the school, and she's gone to a fearful lot of expense. You could not by any possibility forsake her, could you?"
"No, of course not," said Ruth very slowly.
She bade Susy good-bye and walked on; her attitude was that of one who was thinking hard.
"Ruth is very pretty," said Susy to herself, "but I don't know that I quite admire her. She is the sort of girl that everybody loves, and I am not one to admire a universal favorite. She is frightfully, tiresomely good, and she's just _too_ pretty; and she's not a bit vain, and she's not a bit puffed up. Oh, she is just right in every way, and yet I feel that I hate her. She has got the sort of conscience that will worry our queen to distraction. Still, once she joins she'll have to obey our rules, and I expect our queen will make them somewhat stringent."