Part 6 (1/2)
”Good for Nance!” I murmured, and knew no more until morning. I can't believe we had done anything so very wrong or we could not have slept so soundly.
The rising gong found us dead to the world and only the telephone call, three knocks on the wall, aroused us.
”Trouble ahead!” whispered Mary Flannagan, ”there was some one snooping around last night after we were all in bed.”
”Well, we can prove an alibi. Who was it?” I chattered through the 'phone. I had jumped out of bed and was huddled in the closet behind Dum's dress. The window was still up and the heat turned off.
”You sound scared! Do you think they will catch us?”
”Scared! Not a bit of it! I am just cold. Of course, they won't catch us,--thanks to having abolished the honour system,” and I hung up the receiver and commenced the Herculean task of getting Tweedles out of bed.
”Get up!” I urged, pulling the cover off of first one then the other. ”I don't see what you would have done without a roommate. I'd like to know who would wake you up.”
Dee put her head under the pillow like an ostrich trying to evade pursuit and Dum curled up in a little ball like a big caterpillar when you tickle him with a piece of gra.s.s.
”Girls! Get up! I tell you Mary says there is some mischief brewing. We had better get up and be down to breakfast in time with smiling morning faces or Miss Plympton will know who was up late feasting. Me for a cold bath!”
”Me, too!” tweedled the twins, coming to life very rapidly.
A cold plunge and vigorous rubbing took off all traces of the night's dissipations, and as a finis.h.i.+ng touch we all of us let our hair hang down our backs in plaits. Since the summer we had with one accord turned up our hair. We felt that it added dignity to our years; but now was no time for dignity but for great simplicity and innocence.
As the breakfast gong sounded, I am sure in all Virginia there could not be found five more demure maidens than tripped punctually into the dining room. Miss Plympton looked sharply up as we came in, but we felt we had disarmed her with the very sweet bows we gave her and the gentle ”good mornings.”
There was an air of repressed excitement running through the school. We were dying to ask what it was but felt that silence on our part was the only course for us to pursue. Certainly there were fifteen very s.h.i.+ny-eyed Juniors and ten very smug-looking ones. I whispered to Nancy Blair as I pa.s.sed her table on the way out:
”What's up?”
”I am not sure, but I do not believe they are on to our frolic.”
”There is something else,” declared Jean Rice, who sat next to her chum, Nancy. ”The servants are in a great state of excitement over something.
I have had an oatmeal spoon and a b.u.t.ter knife spilled down my neck already and I see Miss Plympton's private cream pitcher has found its way to our table.”
”Well, we will find out what is the matter in Chapel,” I sighed, as I hurried up to my room to put it to some kind of rights. I wanted to get our dummies pulled to pieces, leaving no semblance of human beings. We had twenty minutes between breakfast and Chapel to make our beds and do what cleaning to our rooms we considered necessary to pa.s.s inspection. I tell you we cleaned that room with what Mammy Susan called ”a lick and a promise.” Our dummies we pulled to pieces and scattered their members to the four winds, like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, when the winged monkeys got him. The telephone we concealed even more carefully than usual, draping a sweater over it and smoothing out Dum's dress so no suspicious wrinkle remained.
”We weren't in our beds very long, so let's spread 'em,” said Dee, suiting the action to the word and pulling up her sheets in the most approved unhygienic manner. We swept the dirt under the rugs and with a few slaps of a dust rag on bureau, chairs and tables, and a careful lowering of the shade so the light came in sufficiently softened not to show the dust, we betook ourselves to Chapel as the gong sounded, quaking inwardly but with that ”b.u.t.ter won't melt in my mouth”
expression we considered suitable for the occasion.
Miss Plympton was on the platform waiting for the teachers and pupils to a.s.semble. She had on a stiff, new, dark gray suit that fitted her like the paper on the wall and she was making chins so fast there was no keeping up with them.
”Looks like tin armor and I tell you she is ready for a joust, too!”
exclaimed Dum.
Without any warning at all, Miss Plympton opened the Bible at the tenth chapter of Nehemiah and began to read:
”'Now those that sealed were Nehemiah, the Tirshatha, the son of Hachaliah, and Zidkijah, Seraiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pashur, Amariah, Malchijah, Hattush, Shebaniah, Malluch, Harim, Meremoth, Obadiah, Daniel, Ginnethon, Baruch, Meshullam, Abijah, Mijamin, Maaziah, Bilgai, Shemaiah: these were the priests.'”
I heard a sharply intaken breath from Dee. I also noticed the shoulders of a girl a few seats ahead of me shaking ominously.
Miss Plympton proceeded: ”'And the Levites: both Jeshua, the son of Azaniah, Binnui of the sons of Henadad, Kadmiel; And their brethren Shebaniah, Hodijah, Kelita, Pelaiah, Hanan, Micha, Rehob, Hashabiah, Zaccur, Sherebiah, Shebaniah, Hodijah, Bani, Beninu,'----”