“You ought to have taken Mary Pease and run her right into a closet!” declared the matron.  “Such behavior!”

Ruth was a good deal chagrined that the story should have come out while she was monitor; but she really did not see how she could have helped it.  The quarrel between Amy Gregg and Mary Pease had commenced before Ruth had gone into the classroom.

“And how could you help it?” cried the faithful Jennie.  “I expect little Pease has been aching to tell all these weeks.  She should have been quarantined, in the first place.”

But there was nothing to do about it now, save “to pick up the pieces.”  And that was no light task.  Feeling ran high in Briarwood Hall against Amy Gregg.

Some of the girls of her own age would not speak to her.  Many of the older girls made her feel by every glance and word they gave her that she was taboo.  And it was whispered on the campus that Amy would be sent home by Mrs. Tellingham, if she could not be made to pay, or her folks be made to pay, something toward the damage her carelessness had brought about.

Ruth sheltered the unfortunate Amy all she could.  She even influenced her closest friends to be kind to the child.  At Mrs. Sadoc Smith’s Helen and Ann did not speak of the discovery of the origin of the fire, and, of course, good-natured Jennie Stone did just as Ruth asked, while even Mercy Curtis kept her lips closed.

Amy, however, not being an utterly callous girl, felt the condemnation of the whole school.  There was no escaping that.

Amy had denied having a candle on the night of the fire, and it shocked and grieved Mrs. Tellingham very much to learn that one of her girls was not to be trusted to speak the truth at all times.

Not because of the fire did the preceptress consider sending Amy Gregg home, for the origin of the fire was plainly an accident, though bred in carelessness.  For prevarication, however, Mrs. Tellingham was tempted to expel Amy Gregg.

The girl had denied the fact that she had left a candle burning in her room when she went to supper.  Mary Pease had seen it, and both Miss Scrimp and Ruth Fielding knew that the fire started in that particular room.

Why the girl had left the candle burning was another mystery.  Recklessly denying the main fact, of course Amy would not explain the secondary mystery.  Nagged and heckled by some of the sophomores and juniors, Amy declared she wished the whole school had burned down and then she would not have had to stay at Briarwood another day!

Ruth and Helen one day rescued the girl from the midst of a mob of larger girls who were driving Amy Gregg almost mad by taunting her with being a “fire bug.”

“What are you wild animals doing?” demanded Helen, who was much sharper with the evil doers among the under classes than was Ruth.  “So she’s a ‘fire-bug?’ Oh, girls! what better are you than poor little Gregg, I’d like to know?  Every soul of you has done worse things than she has done—­only your acts did not have such appalling results.  Behave yourselves!”