Barnabas' Day--just after dinner."
"Was no one with you?"
"No, Papa."
"You came up-stairs first?"
"Yes; I wanted my pencil before--" and she stopped short.
"Before what?"
"Before Miss Fosbrook went in to speak to Hal," said Elizabeth,
getting red all over.
"Hal had been dining in the school-room," said Miss Fosbrook, "on
account of a little bit of disobedience."
Captain Merrifield looked keenly at Henry, who tried to return the
look, but shuffled uncomfortably under it.
"Then Hal had been dining in the school-room? Was he there when you
came in?"
"No."
"Were the doors open when you were dining there, Henry?"
"N--no."
"You are sure that you did not meddle with them?"
"I do not know why I should," said Henry, hastily and confusedly.
"It is only the girls and the babies that have things there--and--and
Miss Fosbrook herself had been at the cupboard in the morning; why
shouldn't she have left it undone herself, and the doors got open?"
"No, no!" cried Susan; "if they aren't fastened they always burst
open directly; and we never could have been in the room half the
morning without noticing them!"
"Then you are certain that they were closed when you went down to
dinner?"
Everyone was positive that the great glass doors flying out must have
made themselves observed in that room full of children, especially as
Susan remembered that she had been making a desk of the sloping part
under them.
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