"Nan
Sherwood has been at our house since the first day she and Bess arrived
in Chicago; yet Linda Riggs says she saw Nan taking something in a
store here."
"Hush, Walter, hush!" begged Miss Hagford. "People will hear you."
"Well, people heard her!" declared the angry youth.
"We know Linda Riggs for what she is," Bess put in. "But these other boys
and girls don't. Grace will tell you that Linda is the very meanest girl
at Lakeview Hall."
"Oh! I couldn't say _that_, Bess," gasped timid Grace. "She is my guest
for the evening!"
"Well, I'll say it for you," burst out her brother. "Somebody should tell
the truth about her."
"So they should," chimed in Bess. "She's a mean, spiteful thing!"
"Stop! stop, all of you!" commanded the governess, sternly. "Why, this is
disgraceful."
"I guess it is--I guess it is," said Linda, bitterly. "But this is the
sort of treatment I might expect from anybody so much under the
influence of Sherwood and Harley, as Grace and Walter are. I tell you I
saw Nan Sherwood being held by a detective in Wilson-Meadows store,
because they said she had taken some jewelry from the counter. And she
cannot deny it!"
She said this with such positiveness, and was so much in earnest, that
most of her hearers could not fail to be impressed.
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