“Oh! don’t you remember the rules that were read out at the enrolment ceremony?” cried Dorothy, with a bright spot of pink showing in both her white cheeks. “It was read out that no girl was eligible whose parents had at any time been in prison.”
“Of course; but I had forgotten.” There was a shocked note in the tone of the Head, her eyes grew very troubled, and she sat for a moment in silence.
A moment was it? To Dorothy it seemed more like a year—a whole twelve months—of strained suffering.
“Dorothy, are you quite sure—quite absolutely sure—that this is a fact?” Miss Arden asked, breaking the silence.
Choking back a sob, Dorothy bowed her head. Speech was almost impossible just then. But the Head was waiting for a detailed answer, and she had to speak. “Mrs. Wilson was there—she was in the cab—so she must certainly have known all about it. She told the story to me as if it were a good joke.”
“You have been home since then—did you speak of this to your father and mother?” The Head was looking so worried, so actually careworn, that Dorothy suddenly found it easier to speak.
“I tried to ask my mother about it, but she would not discuss it with me.” Dorothy’s tone became suddenly frigid, as if it had taken on her mother’s attitude.
“Did you speak to your father about it?” The Head was questioning closely now in order that she might get at the very bottom of the mystery.
“Oh, I could not!” There was sharp pain in Dorothy’s tone; her father was her hero—the very best and bravest, the very dearest of men. Something of this she had to make clear to the Head if she could, and she went on, her voice breaking a little in spite of her efforts at self-control. “Daddy is such a dear; he is so hard-working; he is always sacrificing himself for some one or doing something to help some one—I just could not tell him of that awful old story. He would have felt so bad, too, because he kept urging me to win the Lamb Bursary if I could.”
“Did you tell him of that rule—that stupid, foolish rule—about no one being eligible whose parents had been in prison?” asked the Head.
Dorothy put out her hands as if to ward off a blow. “Oh, I could not! Why, it would have broken his heart to think that any action of his in the past was to bar my way in the future. I did tell mother about it.”