"I said this, sir. I said, 'Yes, Mrs. Willis, I did draw that caricature. You will scarcely understand how I, who love you so much, could have been so mad and ungrateful as to do anything to turn you into ridicule. I would cut off my right hand now not to have done it; but I did do it, and I must tell you the truth.' 'Tell me, dear,' she said, quite gently then. 'It was one wet afternoon about a fortnight ago,' I said to her; 'a lot of us middle-school girls were sitting together, and I had a pencil and some bits of paper, and I was making up funny little groups of a lot of us, and the girls were screaming with laughter, for somehow I managed to make the likeness that I wanted in each case. It was very wrong of me, I know. It was against the rules, but I was in one of my maddest humors, and I really did not care what the consequences were. At last one of the girls said: 'You won't dare to make a picture like that of Mrs. Willis, Annie--you know you won't dare.' The minute she said that name I began to feel ashamed. I remembered I was breaking one of the rules, and I suddenly tore up all my bits of paper and flung them into the fire, and I said: 'No, I would not dare to show her dishonor.' Well, afterward, as I was washing my hands for tea up in my room, the temptation came over me so strongly that I felt I could not resist it, to make a funny little sketch of Mrs. Willis. I had a little scrap of thin paper, and I took out my pencil and did it all in a minute. It seemed to me very funny, and I could not help laughing at it; and then I thrust it into my private writing-case, which I always keep locked, and I put the key in my pocket and ran downstairs. I forgot all about the caricature. I had never shown it to any one. How it got into Cecil's book is more than I can say. When I had finished speaking Mrs. Willis looked very hard at the book. 'You are right,' she said; 'this caricature is drawn on a very thin piece of paper, which has been cleverly pasted on the title-page.' Then, Mr. Everard, she asked me a lot of questions. Had I ever parted with my keys? Had I ever left my desk unlocked? 'No,' I said, 'my desk is always locked, and my keys are always in my pocket. Indeed,' I added, 'my keys were absolutely safe for the last week, for they went in a white petticoat to the wash, and came back as rusty as possible.' I could not open my desk for a whole week, which was a great nuisance. I told all this story to Mrs. Willis, and she said to me: 'You are positively certain that this caricature has been taken out of your desk by somebody else, and pasted in here? You are sure that the caricature you drew is not to be found in your desk?' 'Yes,' I said; 'how can I be anything but sure; these are my pencil marks, and that is the funny little turn I gave to your neck which made me laugh when I drew it. Yes; I am certainly sure.'