CHAPTER III
DURING Mrs. Bevans's lifetime it had been against the rules for the girls—even those with families in the neighborhood—to go home for Sunday. So it was still, but under Miss Curtis's milder reign many girls attempted it, and some actually succeeded.
The day after Austin's visit, which was a Saturday, Sally Boyd, whose parents had a large country place near by, went home and took Elise with her. They felt they needed the uninterrupted leisure of twenty-four hours in order properly to discuss the recent events of school life.
The Boyd family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Boyd and two children—George and Sally. Greorge, the elder of the two, was employed in Mr. Johns's bank, and had, ever since he was a little boy, worshiped Elise—a devotion which had become an unexciting, but not an unsatisfactory, part of her every-day life. When things went badly with her and the world seemed hostile, she often caught
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