“What does Sarah say, then?” asked Miss Rutherford.

“She says she isn’t respectable, and that she goes about with men, and she’s only a common street-woman,” answered the girl, speaking evidently with a very clear understanding of what these accusations meant.  The schoolmistress looked away with a rather shocked expression, and thought a little before speaking again.

“Well, that’s all I wanted to ask you, Harriet,” she said.  “I won’t blame you, but I trust you will do as I wish, and never say such things about any one again, whoever may tell you.  It is our duty never to speak ill of others, you know; least of all when we know that to do so will be the cause of much pain and trouble.  I hope you will very soon be able to come back again to us.  And now I will say good-bye.”

In the shop Miss Rutherford renewed to the chemist her sincere regret for what had taken place.

“Of course I cannot risk the recurrence of such a thing,” she said.  “The child who did it will not return to me, Mr. Smales.”

Mr. Smales uttered incoherent excuses, apologies, and thanks, and shufflingly escorted the lady to his shop-door.

Miss Rutherford went home in trouble.  She did not doubt the truth of what Harriet Smales had told her, for she herself had already entertained uneasy suspicions, dating indeed from the one interview she had had with Mrs. Starr, when Ida was first brought to the school, and deriving confirmation from a chance meeting in the street only a few days ago.  It was only too plain what she must do, and the necessity grieved her.  Ida had not shown any especial brilliancy at her books, but the child’s character was a remarkable one, and displayed a strength which might eventually operate either for good or for evil.  With careful training, it seemed at present very probable that the good would predominate.  But the task was not such as the schoolmistress felt able to undertake, bearing in mind the necessity of an irreproachable character for her school if it were to be kept together at all.  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.