"Yes, but there"s another lid underneath. You"re not at the milk yet."
Marjorie"s feathers began to fall. She was not quite as clever as she had thought.
"Here, I"ll do it," said Betty, s.n.a.t.c.hing the tin. "Take down a picture and pull the nail out of the wall, and give me a boot to hammer with.
You"ve to go through this arrow point and then the thing prises up.
Steady! Here we are!"
"Cave! Renie"s coming. Stick the things away!"
Marjorie hastily seized the feast, and bestowed it inside her wardrobe.
Thanks to the drawn curtains of her cubicle Irene had not obtained even a glimpse.
"What are you three doing inside there?" she asked curiously, but no one would tell. The secret was not to be given away too soon.
The conspirators had decided that it would be wiser not to ask any other girls to join the party, but to keep the affair entirely to their own dormitory.
"They"ll make such a noise if we have them in, and it will wake the Acid Drop and bring her down upon us," said Sylvia.
"Besides which, it"s only a small cake and wouldn"t go round," stated Betty practically.
Irene went to bed in a fit of the blues. Only half her presents had turned up, and two of her aunts had not written to her.
"It"s been a rotten birthday," she groaned. "I knew it would be hateful having it at school. Why wasn"t I born in the holidays? There ought to be a law regulating births to certain times of the year. If I were head of a school I"d let every girl go home for her birthday. Don"t speak to me! I feel scratchy!"
Her room-mates chuckled, and for the present left her alone. Sylvia began to sing a song about tears turning to smiles and sorrow to joy, until Irene begged her to stop.
"It"s the limit to-night! When I"m blue the one thing I can"t stand is anybody trying to cheer me up. It gets on my nerves!"
"Sleep it off, old sport!" laughed Marjorie. "I don"t mind betting that when you wake up you"ll feel in a very different frame of mind."
At which remark the others spluttered.
"You"ll find illumination, in fact," hinnied Betty.
"I think you"re all most unkind!" quavered Irene.
The confederates had decided to wait until the magic hour of midnight before they began their beano. They felt it was wiser to give Miss Norton plenty of time to go to bed and fall asleep. She often sat up late in the study reading, and they did not care to risk a visit from her. A bracket clock on the stairs sounded the quarters, and Marjorie, as the lightest sleeper, undertook to keep awake and listen to its chimes. It was rather difficult not to doze when the room was dark and her companions were breathing quietly and regularly in the other beds.
The time between the quarters seemed interminable. At eleven o"clock she heard Miss Norton walk along the corridor and go into her bedroom. After that no other sound disturbed the establishment, and Marjorie repeated poetry and even dates and French verbs to keep herself awake.
At last the clock chimed its full range and struck twelve times. She sat up and felt for the matches.
Betty and Sylvia, who had gone to sleep prepared, woke with the light, but it was a more difficult matter to rouse Irene. She turned over in bed and grunted, and they were obliged to haul her into a sitting position before she would open her eyes.
"What"s the matter? Zepps?" she asked drowsily.
"No, no; it"s your birthday party. Look!" beamed the others.
On a chair by her bedside stood the cake, resplendent with its sixteen little lighted candles, and also the tin of condensed milk. Irene blinked at them in amazement.
"Jubilate! What a frolicsome joke!" she exclaimed. "I say, this is awfully decent of you!"
"We told you you"d wake up in better spirits, old sport!" purred Marjorie. "I flatter myself those candles look rather pretty. You can tell your fortune by blowing them out."
"It"s a shame to touch them," objected Irene.
"But we want some cake," announced Betty and Sylvia.
"Go on, give a good puff!" prompted Marjorie. "Then we can count how many you"ve blown out. Five! This year, next year, some time, never!
This year! Goody! You"ll have to be quick about it. It"s almost time to be putting up the banns. Now again. Tinker, tailor, soldier! Lucky you!
My plum stones generally give me beggar-man or thief. Silk, satin, muslin, rags; silk, satin! You"ve got all the luck to-night. Coach, carriage! You"re not blowing fair, Renie! You did that on purpose so that it shouldn"t come wheelbarrow! Only one candle left--let"s leave it lighted while we cut the rest."
Everybody agreed that the cake was delicious. They felt they had never tasted a better in their lives, although it was a specimen of war-time cookery.
"I wish we could have got some cocoa," sighed Betty. "I tried to borrow a little and a spirit lamp from Meg Hutchinson, but she says they can"t get any methylated spirit now."
"Condensed milk is delicious by itself," suggested Sylvia.
"Sorry we haven"t a spoon," apologized Marjorie.
For lack of other means of getting at their sweet delicacy the girls dipped lead-pencils into the condensed milk and took what they could.
"It"s rather like white honey," decided Betty after a critical taste.
"Yes--I certainly think it"s quite topping. It makes me think of Russian toffee."
"Don"t speak of toffee. We haven"t made any since sugar went short.
Jemima! I shall eat heaps when the war"s over!"
"You greedy pig! You ought to leave it for the soldiers."
"But there won"t be any soldiers then."
"Yes, there"ll be some for years and years afterwards. They"ll take some time, you know, to get well in the hospitals."
"Then there"s a chance for me to nurse," exclaimed Marjorie. "I"m always so afraid the war will all be over before I"ve left school, and----"
"I say, what"s that noise?" interrupted Irene anxiously. "If the Acid Drop drops on us she"ll be very acid indeed."
For reply, Marjorie popped the condensed milk tin into her wardrobe, blew out the candle, and hopped into bed post-haste, an example which was followed by the others with equal dispatch. They were only just in time, for a moment later the door opened, and Miss Norton, clad in a blue dressing-gown, flashed her torchlight into the room. Seeing the girls all in bed, and apparently fast asleep, she did not enter, but closed the door softly, and they heard her footsteps walking away down the corridor.
"A near shave!" murmured Marjorie.
"Sh! sh! Don"t let"s talk. She may come back and listen outside,"
whispered Sylvia, with a keen distrust for Miss Norton"s notions of vigilance.
Next morning the girls in No. 8 Dormitory mentioned that they had heard a noise during the night.
"Somebody walked down the pa.s.sage," proclaimed Lennie Jackson. "Enid thought it was a ghost."