"I don't believe a word of it! Ilse never went driving with Marsh Orde." Emily was white-lipped with indignation.
"I was told by a person who SAW them. Ilse is being talked about EVERYWHERE. Perhaps you have no authority over her but surely you have some INFLUENCE. Though YOU do foolish things yourself sometimes, don't you? Not meaning any harm perhaps. That time you went bathing on the Blair Water sands without any clothes on, for instance? THAT'S known all through the school. I heard Marsh's brother laughing about it. Now, WASN'T that foolish, my dear?"
Emily blushed with anger and shame... though quite as much over being my-deared by Evelyn Blake as anything else. That beautiful bathing by moonlight... what a thing of desecration it had been made by the world! She would NOT discuss it with Evelyn... she would not even tell Evelyn they had their petticoats on. Let her think what she would.
"I don't think you quite understand some things, Miss Blake," she said, with a certain fine, detached irony of tone and manner which made very commonplace words seem charged, with meanings unutterable.
"Oh, you belong to the Chosen People, don't you?" Evelyn laughed her malicious little laugh.
"I do," said Emily calmly, refusing to withdraw her eyes from her note-book.
"Well, don't get so vexed, dear. I only spoke because I thought it a pity to see poor Ilse getting in wrong everywhere. I rather like her, poor soul. And I wish she would tone down her taste in colours a bit. That scarlet evening dress she wore at the Prep concert... really, you know, it's weird."
"She looked like a tall golden lily in a scarlet sheath, I thought," said Emily.
"What a loyal friend you are, dear. I wonder if Ilse would stand up for YOU like that. Well, I suppose I ought to let you study. You have English at ten, haven't you? Mr. Scoville is going to watch the room... Mr. Travers is sick. Don't you think Mr. Scoville's hair is wonderful? Speaking of hair, dear, why don't you dress yours low enough at the sides to hide your ears... the tips, anyway? I think it would become you so much better."
Emily decided that if Evelyn Blake called her "dear" again she would throw an ink-bottle at her. WHY didn't she go away and let her study?
Evelyn had another shot in her locker.
"That callow young friend of yours from Stovepipe Town has been trying to get into The Quill. He sent in a patriotic poem. Tom showed it to me. It was a scream. One line especially was delicious... 'Canada, like a MAIDEN, welcomes back her sons.' You should have heard Tom howl."
Emily could hardly help smiling herself, though she was horribly annoyed with Perry for making such a target of himself. WHY couldn't he learn his limitations and understand that the slopes of Parnassus were not for him?
"I do not think the editor of The Quill has any business to show rejected contributions to outsiders," she said coldly.
"Oh, Tom doesn't look on ME as an outsider. And that really WAS too good to keep. Well, I think I'll run down to the Shoppe."
Emily sighed with relief as Evelyn took her departure. Presently Ilse returned.
"Evelyn gone? Sweet temper she was in this morning. I can't understand what Mary sees in her. Mary's a decent sort though she isn't exciting."
"Ilse," said Emily seriously. "Were you out driving with Marsh Orde one night last week?"
Ilse stared.
"No, you dear young ass, I wasn't. I can guess where you heard THAT yarn. I don't know who the girl was."
"But you cut French and went up-river with Ronnie Gibson?"
"Peccavi."
"Ilse... you shouldn't... really... "
"Now, don't make me mad, Emily!" said Ilse shortly. "You're getting too smug... something ought to be done to cure you before it gets chronic. I hate prunes and prisms. I'm off... I want to run round to the Shoppe before I go to the school."
Ilse gathered up her books pettishly and flounced out. Emily yawned and decided she was through with the note-book. She had half an hour yet before it was necessary to go to the school. She would lie down on Ilse's bed for just a moment.
It seemed the next minute when she found herself sitting up, staring with dismayed face at Mary Carswell's clock. Five minutes to eleven... five minutes to cover a quarter of a mile and be at her desk for examination. Emily flung on coat and cap, caught up her note-books and fled. She arrived at the High School out of breath, with a nasty subconsciousness that people had looked at her queerly as she tore through the streets, hung up her wraps without a glance at the mirror, and hurried into the class-room.
A stare of amazement followed by a ripple of laughter went over the room. Mr. Scoville, tall, slim, elegant, was giving out the examination papers. He laid one down before Emily and said gravely,
"Did you look in your mirror before you came to class, Miss Starr?"
"No," said Emily resentfully, sensing something fearfully wrong somewhere.
"I... think... I would look... now... if I were... you." Mr. Scoville seemed to be speaking with difficulty.
Emily got up and went back to the girls' dressing-room. She met Principal Hardy in the Hall and Principal Hardy stared at her. Why Principal Hardy stared... why the Preps had laughed... Emily understood when she confronted the dressing-room looking-glass.
Drawn skilfully and blackly across her upper lip and her cheeks was a moustache... a flamboyant, very black moustache, with fantastically curled ends. For a moment Emily gaped at herself in blank horror... why... what... WHO had done it?
She whirled furiously about. Evelyn Blake had just entered the room.
"YOU... you did this!" panted Emily.
Evelyn stared for a moment... then went off into a peal of laughter.
"Emily Starr! You look like a nightmare. Do you mean to tell me you went into class with THAT on your face?"
Emily clenched her hands.
"YOU did it," she said again.
Evelyn drew herself up very haughtily.
"Really, Miss Starr, I hope you don't think I'd STOOP to such a trick. I suppose your dear friend Ilse thought she'd play a joke on you... she was chuckling over something when she came in a few minutes ago."
"Ilse never did it," cried Emily.
Evelyn shrugged her shoulders.
"I'd wash it off first and find out who did it afterward," she said with a twitching face as she went out.
Emily, trembling from head to foot with anger, shame and the most intense humiliation she had ever suffered, washed the moustache off her face. Her first impulse was to go home... she could not face that roomful of Preps again. Then she set her teeth and went back, holding her black head very high as she walked down the aisle to her desk. Her face was burning and her spirit was aflame. In the corner she saw Ilse's yellow head bent over her paper. The others were smiling and tittering. Mr. Scoville was insultingly grave. Emily took up her pen but her hand shook over her paper.
If she could have had a good cry there and then her shame and anger would have found a saving vent. But that was impossible. She would NOT cry. She would not let them see the depths of her humiliation. If Emily could have laughed off the malicious joke it would have been better for her. Being Emily... and being one of the proud Murrays... she could not. She resented the indignity to the very core of her passionate soul.
As far as the English paper was concerned she might almost as well have gone home. She had lost twenty minutes already. It was ten minutes more before she could steady her hand sufficiently to write. Her thoughts she could not command at all. The paper was a difficult one, as Mr. Travers' papers always were. Her mind seemed a chaos of jostling ideas spinning around a fixed point of torturing shame. When she handed in her paper and left the class- room she knew she had lost her star. That paper would be no more than a pass, if it were that. But in her turmoil of feeling she did not care. She hurried home to her unfriendly room, thankful that Aunt Ruth was out, threw herself on the bed and wept. She felt sore, beaten, bruised... and under all her pain was a horrible, teasing little doubt.