I can well understand your feeling; but as your sister is with your mother, surely you had better come to us,--I mean quite at once.

I will not scruple to tell you what mamma says, because I know your good sense.

She says that as the interest of the school may possibly be concerned, and as you have no regular engagement, she thinks you ought to leave Silverbridge; but she says that it will be better that you come to us than that you should go home.

If you went home, people might say that you had left in some sort of disgrace.

Come to us, and when all this has been put right, then you go back to Silverbridge; and then, if a certain person speaks again, you can make a different answer.