“I prefer to believe the evidence of my eyes,” replied Mrs. Florence, as she drew a paper from her pocket.  “Here is the note!  I suppose you will hardly deny your own signature.”

Katy seized the note.  It was written in a round, unformed hand, and ran thus:—­

“Dear Berry,—­I saw you last night on the green.  I think you are splendid.  All the nuns think so.  I look at you very often out of my window.  If I let down a string, would you tie a cake to it, like that kind which you threw to Mary Andrews last term?  Tie two cakes, please; one for me and one for my room-mate.  The string will be at the end of the Row. 
            “Miss Carr.”

In spite of her agitation, Katy could hardly keep back a smile as she read this absurd production.  Mrs. Florence saw the smile, and her tone was more severe than ever, as she said,—­

“Give that back to me, if you please, It will be my justification with your father if he objects to your change of room.”

“But, Mrs. Florence,” cried Katy, “I never wrote that note.  It isn’t my handwriting; it isn’t my—­ Oh, surely you can’t think so!  It’s too ridiculous.”

“Go to your room at once,” said Mrs. Florence, “and be thankful that your punishment is such a mild one.  If your home were not so distant, I should write to ask your father to remove you from the school; instead of which, I merely put you on the other side of the entry, out of reach of farther correspondence of this sort.”

“But I shall write him, and he will take us away immediately,” cried Katy, stung to the quick by this obstinate injustice.  “I will not stay, neither shall Clover, where our word is disbelieved, and we are treated like this.  Papa knows!  Papa will never doubt us a moment when we tell him that this isn’t true.”

With these passionate words she left the room.  I do not think that either Mrs. Florence or Mrs. Nipson felt very comfortable after she was gone.

That was a dreadful afternoon.  The girls had no heart to arrange No. 1, or do any thing toward making it comfortable, but lay on the bed in the midst of their belongings, crying, and receiving visits of condolence from their friends.  The S. S. U. C. meeting was put off.  Katy was in no humor to act as president, or Clover to read her funny poem.  Rose and Mary Silver sat by, kissing them at intervals, and declaring that it was a shame, while the other members dropped in one by one to re-echo the same sentiments.

“If it had been anybody else!” said Alice Gibbons; “but Katy of all persons!  It is too much!”

“So I told Mrs. Florence,” sobbed Rose Red.  “Oh, why was I born so bad?  If I’d always been good, and a model to the rest of you, perhaps she’d have believed me instead of scolding harder than ever.”

The idea of Rose as a “model” made Clover smile in the midst of her dolefulness.

“It’s an outrageous thing,” said Ellen Gray, “if Mrs. Florence only knew it, you two have done more to keep the rest of us steady than any girls in school.”