[Ill.u.s.tration: THEY WERE HUDDLED TOGETHER, WATCHING HER WITH AWESTRUCK FACES]
"Yes," groaned Marjorie, "I shall have to own up. There"s nothing else for it. But I"m not going to tell the Acid Drop. I"m going straight to the Empress herself. She"ll be the more decent of the two."
"I believe you"re right," agreed Betty. "Look here, it was my idea, so I"m going with you."
"And I was in it too," said Irene.
"And so was I," said Sylvia.
"Then we"ll all four go in a body," decided Betty. "Come along, let"s beard the lioness in her den and get it over."
Mrs. Morrison was extremely surprised at the tale the girls had to tell.
She frowned, but looked considerably relieved.
"As you have told me yourselves I will let it pa.s.s," she commented, "but you must each give me your word of honour that there shall be no more of these silly practical jokes. I don"t consider it at all clever to try to frighten your companions. Jokes such as these sometimes have very serious results. Will you each promise?"
"Yes, Mrs. Morrison, on my honour," replied four meek voices in chorus.
CHAPTER IX
St. Ethelberta"s
The immediate result to Marjorie of her mock somnambulistic adventure was that she got a very bad cold in her head, due no doubt to walking about the pa.s.sages with bare feet and only her nightdress on. It was highly aggravating, because she was considered an invalid, and her Wednesday exeat was cancelled. She had to watch from the infirmary window when Dona, escorted by Miss Jones, started off for The Tamarisks.
Dona waved a sympathetic good-bye as she pa.s.sed. She was a kind-hearted little soul, and genuinely sorry for Marjorie, though it was rather a treat for her to have Elaine quite to herself for the afternoon. Mrs.
Anderson had been justified in her satisfaction that the sisters had not been placed in the same hostel. In Marjorie"s presence Dona was nothing but an echo or a shadow, with no personality of her own. At St.
Ethelberta"s, however, she had begun in her quiet way to make a place for herself. She was already quite a favourite among her house-mates.
They teased her a little, but in quite a good-tempered fashion, and Dona, accustomed to the continual banter of a large family, took all chaffing with the utmost calm. She was happier at school than she had expected to be. Miss Jones, the hostel mistress, was genial and warm-hearted, and kept well in touch with her girls. She talked to them about their various hobbies, and was herself interested in so many different things that she could give valuable hints on photography, bookbinding, raffia-plaiting, poker-work, chip-carving, stencilling, pen-painting, or any other of the handicrafts in which the Juniors dabbled. She was artistic, and had done quite a nice pastel portrait of Belle Miller, whose Burne-Jones profile and auburn hair made her an excellent model. Miss Jones had no lack of sitters when she felt disposed to paint, for every girl in the house would have been only too flattered to be asked.
Dona was a greater success in her hostel than in the schoolroom. After her easy lessons with a daily governess she found the standard of her form extremely high. She was not fond of exerting her brains, and her exercises were generally full of "howlers". Miss Clark, her form mistress, was apt to wax eloquent over her mistakes, but she took the teacher"s sarcasms with the same stolidity as the girls" teasings. It was a saying in the cla.s.s that nothing could knock sparks out of Dona.
Yet she possessed a certain reserve of shrewd common sense which was sometimes apt to astonish people. If she took the trouble to evolve a plan she generally succeeded in carrying it out.
Now on this particular afternoon when she went alone to The Tamarisks she had a very special scheme in her head. She had struck up an immensely hot friendship with a Scottish girl named Ailsa Donald, whose tastes resembled her own. Dona was in No. 2 Dormitory and Ailsa in No.
5, and it was the ambition of both to be placed together in adjoining cubicles. Miss Jones sometimes allowed changes to be made, but, as it happened, n.o.body in No. 2 was willing to give up her bed to Ailsa or in No. 5 to yield place to Dona, so the chums must perforce remain apart.
They spent every available moment of the day together, but after the 9.15 bell they separated.
Dona had asked each of her room-mates to consider whether No. 5 was not really a more sunny, airy, and comfortable bedroom than No. 2.
"The dressing-tables are bigger," she urged to Mona Kenworthy. "You"d have far more room to spread out your bottles of scent and hairwash and cremolia and things."
"Thanks, I"ve plenty of room where I am, and my things are all nicely settled. I"m not going to move for anybody, and that"s flat," returned Mona.
Dona next tackled Nellie Mason, and suggested warily that No. 5, being farther away from Miss Jones"s bedroom, afforded greater opportunities for laughter and jokes without so much danger of being pounced upon. Her fish, however, refused to swallow the tempting bait, and Beatrice Elliot, whom she also sounded on the subject, was equally inflexible.
Most girls would have accepted the inevitable, but Dona was not to be vanquished. She had a dark plan at the bottom of her mind, and consulted Elaine about it that afternoon. Elaine laughed, waxed enthusiastic, and suggested a visit to a bird-fancier"s shop down in the town. It was a queer little place, with cages full of canaries in the window, and an aquarium, and some delightful fox-terrier puppies and Persian kittens on sale, also a squirrel which was running round and round in a kind of revolving wheel.
Elaine and Dona entered, and asked for white mice.
"Mice?" said the old man in charge. "I"ve got a pair here that will just suit you. They"re real beauties, they are. Tame? They"ll eat off your hand. Look here!"
He fumbled under the counter, and brought out a cage, from which he produced two fine and plump specimens of the mouse tribe. They justified his eulogy, for they allowed Dona to handle them and stroke them without exhibiting any signs of fear or displeasure.
"Suppose I were to let them run about the room," she enquired, "could I get them back into their cage again?"
"Easy as anything, missie. All you"ve got to do is to put a bit of cheese inside. They"ll smell it directly, and come running home, and then you shut the door on them. They"ll do anything for cheese. Give them plenty of sawdust to burrow in, and some cotton-wool to make a nest, and they"re perfectly happy. Shall I wrap the cage up in brown paper for you?"
Dona issued from the shop carrying her parcel, and with a bland smile upon her face.
"If these don"t clear Mona out of No. 2 I don"t know what will," she chuckled.
"How are you going to smuggle them in to Brackenfield?" enquired Elaine.
"I think all parcels that you take in are examined. You can"t put a cage of mice in your pocket or under your skirt."
"I"ve thought of that," returned Dona. "You and Auntie are going to take me back to-night. I shall pop the parcel under a laurel bush as we go up the drive, then before supper I"ll manage to dash out and get it, and take it upstairs to my room. See?"
"I think you"re a thoroughly naughty, schemeing girl," laughed Elaine, "and that I oughtn"t to be conniving at such shameful tricks."
Shakespeare tells us that
"Some cannot abide a gaping pig, Nor some the harmless necessary cat".
Many people have their pet dislikes, and as to Mona Kenworthy, the very mention of mice sent a series of cold shivers down her back.
"Suppose one were to run up my skirt, I"d have a fit. I really should die!" she would declare dramatically. "The thought of them makes me absolutely creep. I shouldn"t mind them so much if they didn"t scuttle so hard. Black beetles? Oh, I"d rather have c.o.c.kroaches any day than mice!"
It was with the knowledge of this aversion on the part of Mona that Dona laid her plans. She left the cage under the laurel bush in the drive, and by great good luck succeeded in fetching it un.o.bserved and conveying it to her dormitory, where she unwrapped it and stowed it away in her wardrobe. When she had undressed that evening, and just before the lights were turned out, she placed the cage under her bed. She waited until Miss Clark had made her usual tour of inspection, and the door of the room was shut for the night, then, leaning over, she opened the cage and allowed its occupants to escape. They made full use of their liberty, and at once began to scamper about, investigate the premises, and enjoy themselves.
"What"s that?" said Mona, sitting up in bed.
Dona did not reply. She pretended to be asleep already.
"It sounds like a mouse," volunteered Nellie Mason.
"Oh, good gracious! I hope it"s not in the room."
The old saying, "as quiet as a mouse", is not always justified in solid fact. On this occasion the two small intruders made as much noise as tigers. They began to gnaw the skirting board, and the sound of their sharp little teeth echoed through the room. Mona waxed quite hysterical.
"If it runs over my bed I shall shriek," she declared.
"Perhaps it"s not really in the room, it"s probably in the wainscot,"
suggested Beatrice Elliot.
"I tell you I heard it run across the floor. Oh, I say, there it is again!"
The frolicsome pair continued their revels for some time, and kept the girls wide awake. When Mona fell asleep at last it was with her head buried under the bed-clothes. Very early in the morning Dona got up, tempted her pets back with some cheese which she had brought from The Tamarisks, and put the cage into her wardrobe again.