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promise faithfully always to come straight home from school with Winnie and Lesbia, and never go anywhere without asking?"
    "On my honour!"
    "Then I won't trouble him. He's enough worries, poor darling, without adding any more to them! I only wish I could save him some of those he already has!"
    Early next morning, long before Lesbia was awake, Gwen got up very quietly, and unlocked her savings box. It seemed dreadfully hard to have to take her treasured fifteen shillings; pocket money was such a scarce article at the Parsonage that she did not know when she would have the chance of accumulating so much again. There were only two threepenny bits and a penny left to rattle when she shook the box, so she sighed ruefully as she locked it, and put it back in its place on the top shelf of the bookcase. She hoped Netta would not forget to bring the half-sovereign she had promised to lend, though how the loan was ever to be repaid she could not imagine. For to-day it seemed enough if she had avoided Miss Roscoe's anger, and spared casting an added worry on Father's already overburdened shoulders.
    Netta was faithful to her word; she came to school with both the ten-shilling piece and the half-crown which was to be her share of the "hush money" for Emma. The two girls held a long whispered conference together during the interval.
    "I can't possibly go and pay Parker's myself," said Gwen. "You've no idea what a row I got into last night for missing the bus. Winnie'll keep an eye on me to-day at four o'clock, I can assure you. Could you go?"
    "Very sorry, but I've got to go straight home too. Some cousins are coming to tea, and I have to ask Miss Evans to let me out of the drawing class ten minutes earlier. Why not get Emma to go? We shall have to see her to give her her tip."
    "A good idea," said Gwen. "Emma understands all about it."
    They found the housemaid when she was helping to lay the tables for dinner, and managed to draw her aside for a private talk.
    "Did the fresh china come last night?" they asked eagerly.
    "Oh, yes! it came all right, and Miss Roscoe never said a word, so you may think yourselves lucky," replied Emma.
    "Here's the little present we promised you," said Netta, slipping the five shillings into her hand.
    "I hardly like taking it!" protested Emma, though she popped it hastily into her pocket all the same.
    "Could you do something more for us?" begged Gwen. "Will you call at Parker's and pay for the broken china? Here's the money--it's one pound two and six. Neither Netta nor I can possibly go."
    "Oh, yes, I don't mind doing that!" returned Emma. "It's my night out this evening, and I shall be down High Street, so I can easily call at Parker's on my road. They don't close till eight o'clock."
    "And you promise you'll never breathe a single word to anybody about this?"
    "Not likely!" declared Emma, as she turned away to finish laying her table.
    "Well, I'm thankful that's done with," thought Gwen. "It might have been an awkward affair, and I've come out of it uncommonly well. I feel as if I'd laid a ghost, and popped a stone on its grave."
    It was all very well for Gwen to congratulate herself, but she quite forgot that ghosts have an awkward habit sometimes of disregarding tombstones, and rising from their graves to haunt those who have interred them. The matter of the broken china was not to be so easily disposed of as she had imagined, and though for the present her secret seemed safe, there was trouble ahead for her in plenty.
CHAPTER V
    Trouble in the Fifth
    The direct result of Gwen's transaction about the china was to fling her into the arms of Netta Goodwin. With such a secret between them it was impossible not to be friendly, and though Netta was hardly an ideal chum, there seemed no choice in the matter. Moreover, she was the only one in the Fifth who had offered advances; the other girls, still indignant at the promotion of a Junior, turned the cold shoulder. This unfortunate intimacy caused Gwen to