Mary is found healthy and is sent to her room and squeezes the information out of Peggy and Evelyn. Mary plans to ask her grandmother, Amelia Tilford—who not only indulges her but who also helped Karen and Martha a great deal in setting up the school—to allow her not to return. When Amelia refuses, Mary cleverly twists what the girls had overheard. With the help of several well-crafted lies and a book that the girls have been reading in secret, Mary convinces her grandmother that Karen and Martha are having a lesbian affair. On hearing this, Amelia Tilford begins contacting the parents of Mary's classmates. Shortly, most of Mary's schoolmates have been pulled out of school. Rosalie Wells, a student whose mother is abroad, stays with Mary.