“If properly so, then why do you find fault with me?”

“Come, come,” roared Mr. Jansenius, deliberately losing his temper as a last expedient to subdue her, “don’t be impertinent, Miss.”

Agatha’s eyes dilated; evanescent flushes played upon her cheeks and neck; she stamped with her heel.  “Uncle John,” she cried, “if you dare to address me like that, I will never look at you, never speak to you, nor ever enter your house again.  What do you know about good manners, that you should call me impertinent?  I will not submit to intentional rudeness; that was the beginning of my quarrel with Miss Wilson.  She told me I was impertinent, and I went away and told her that she was wrong by writing it in the fault book.  She has been wrong all through, and I would have said so before but that I wanted to be reconciled to her and to let bygones be bygones.  But if she insists on quarrelling, I cannot help it.”

“I have already explained to you, Mr. Jansenius,” said Miss Wilson, concentrating her resentment by an effort to suppress it, “that Miss Wylie has ignored all the opportunities that have been made for her to reinstate herself here.  Mrs. Miller and I have waived merely personal considerations, and I have only required a simple acknowledgment of this offence against the college and its rules.”

“I do not care that for Mrs. Miller,” said Agatha, snapping her fingers.  “And you are not half so good as I thought.”

“Agatha,” said Mr. Jansenius, “I desire you to hold your tongue.”

Agatha drew a deep breath, sat down resignedly, and said:  “There!  I have done.  I have lost my temper; so now we have all lost our tempers.”

“You have no right to lose your temper, Miss,” said Mr. Jansenius, following up a fancied advantage.

“I am the youngest, and the least to blame,” she replied.  “There is nothing further to be said, Mr. Jansenius,” said Miss Wilson, determinedly.  “I am sorry that Miss Wylie has chosen to break with us.”

“But I have not chosen to break with you, and I think it very hard that I am to be sent away.  Nobody here has the least quarrel with me except you and Mrs. Miller.  Mrs. Miller is annoyed because she mistook me for her cat, as if that was my fault!  And really, Miss Wilson, I don’t know why you are so angry.  All the girls will think I have done something infamous if I am expelled.  I ought to be let stay until the end of the term; and as to the Rec—­the fault book, you told me most particularly when I first came that I might write in it or not just as I pleased, and that you never dictated or interfered with what was written.  And yet the very first time I write a word you disapprove of, you expel me.  Nobody will ever believe now that the entries are voluntary.”

Miss Wilson’s conscience, already smitten by the coarseness and absence of moral force in the echo of her own “You are impertinent,” from the mouth of Mr. Jansenius, took fresh alarm.  “The fault book,” she said, “is for the purpose of recording self-reproach alone, and is not a vehicle for accusations against others.”