After a great deal of learned talk, Molly stood on a soap box and recited “Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night.”
This was the crowning joy of that famous evening, but still Minerva appeared seriously impressed.
“I recited that once at Mill Town High School,” she remarked.
“Can’t you give us something to-night?” asked Molly kindly, feeling that in some way the unfortunate Minerva ought to be allowed to join in.
“I don’t know that I ought to give another poem by the same man,” she replied, “except that Miss Oldham gave ‘The Raven’ in French.”
“Don’t tell us you know ‘The Bells’?” demanded Edith Williams, in a trembling whisper.
“Oh, yes. I’ve given it at lots of school entertainments.”
“We had better turn down the lights,” said Margaret. “The room should be in darkness except the side light where Miss Higgins will stand. That will be the spot light.”
This was a fortunate arrangement because, while Minerva recited “The Bells,” with all proper gestures, intonations and echoes, according to Cleveland’s recitation book, the girls silently collapsed. When she had finished, they were reduced to that exhausted state that arrives after a supreme effort not to laugh.
At last the entertainment came to an end. Minerva departed with some of the others, while those who lived close by remained to chat for a few minutes.
“I give up,” exclaimed Margaret Wakefield. “Minerva is beyond teaching. She must remain forever the smartest girl in Mill Town High School.”
“The only pity of it is that it was all wasted on one humorless person. We really furnished her with a most delightful entertainment and she never even guessed it,” declared Nance.
“I’m glad she didn’t,” remarked Molly. “It was cruel, I think. Suppose she had caught on? Do you think it would have helped her? And we would have been uncomfortable.”
“Suppose she did understand and pretended not to. The joke would have been decidedly on us,” put in Katherine.
Later events of that evening would seem to bear out this suggestion, although just how deeply, if at all, Minerva was implicated in what followed no one could possibly tell. It was a question long afterwards in dispute whether one person had managed the sequel to the Literary Evening, or whether there had been a confederate. Certainly it seemed that every imp in Bedlam had been set free to do mischief, and if Minerva, as arch-imp, was looking for revenge, she found it.
“I don’t like to appear inhospitable, girls, but it’s five minutes of ten and I think you’d better chase along,” said Margaret Wakefield.
But when Judy laid hold of the knob and tried to open the door, it would not budge.
“It won’t open,” she exclaimed. “What’s to be done?”
What was to be done? They pulled and jerked and endeavored to pry it open with a silver shoe horn and a pair of scissors, and at last Jessie, as the smallest, was chosen to climb over the transom and go for help. It was five minutes past ten, and they prudently turned out the lights.
“Let me get at that knob just once before we work the transom scheme,” ejaculated Margaret, who was very strong and athletic.
“People always think they can open tin cans and doors and pull stoppers when other people can’t,” observed Judy sarcastically.
Margaret treated this remark with contemptuous indifference. Seizing the knob with both hands, she turned it and, putting her knee to the jamb, pulled with all her force. The arch fiend on the other side must have turned the key at this critical moment, for the door flew open and the president tumbled back as if she had been shot from a catapult, knocking a number of surprised poets and authors into a tumbled heap. They were all considerably bruised and battered, and Margaret bit her tongue; a severe punishment for one whose oratory was the pride of the class.
“Hush,” whispered Jessie, who alone had escaped the tumble, “here comes the house matron.”
Softly she closed the door, and the girls waited until the danger was over. Then Margaret hastened to examine the keyhole.
“There’s no key in it,” she whispered, speaking with difficulty, because her tongue was bleeding from the marks of two teeth.
Whoever played the trick must have unlocked the door, jerked the key out and fled the instant the matron appeared at the end of the corridor. There was no time to discuss the mystery, however. She would be coming back in two minutes. Again they waited in silence until they heard the swish of her dress as she went past the door, now left open a crack in order that Judy, lying flat on her stomach on the floor, and enjoying herself immensely, might be on the lookout.
“Come on,” she hissed, as the large, rotund figure of Mrs. Pelham was lost in the darkness, and out they scuttled like a lot of mice loosed from the trap.
But the evening’s adventures were not over.
As Judy, in advance of Molly and Nance, pushed open their door, already ajar, a small pail of water, placed on the top of the door by the arch-imp, whoever she was, fell on Judy’s head and deluged her. It contained hardly a quart of water, but it might have been a gallon for the wreck it made of Judy’s clothes and the room.
“Oh, but I’ll get even with somebody,” exclaimed that enraged young woman.
They turned on the green-shaded student’s lamp and drew the blinds, the night watchman being very vigilant at the dormitories, and began silently mopping up the floor with towels.
Judy removed her wet clothes, and unbound her long hair, light in color and fine as silk in quality.
“I can’t go to bed,” she announced, “until I find out what’s happened to the Gemini,” and without another word she crept into the corridor.
“Nance,” whispered Molly, when they were alone, “if Minerva Higgins did this, she’s about the boldest freshman alive to-day. But, after all, we can’t exactly blame her, considering what we did to her.”
“She is taking great chances,” replied Nance, who had a thorough respect for college etiquette and class caste. “Every pert freshman must be prepared for a call-down; and if she doesn’t take it like a lamb, she’ll just have to expect a freeze-out. It’s much better for her in the end. If Minerva were allowed to keep this up for four years, she would be entirely insufferable. She’s almost that now.”
“Don’t you think she could find it out without such severe methods?”
“Severe methods, indeed,” answered Nance indignantly. “Do you call it severe to be asked to sup with the brightest girls in Wellington? Margaret’s speech alone was worth all the humiliation Minerva might have felt; but she didn’t feel any. Do you consider that rough, crude jokes like this are going to be tolerated?”
“But we don’t know that Minerva played them, yet,” pleaded Molly. “I do admit, though, that it must have been a very ordinary person who could think of them. Margaret might have been badly hurt if she hadn’t fallen on top of the rest of us.”
Presently Judy came stalking into their bedroom.
“It’s just as I expected,” she announced. “The Williamses’ bed was full of carpet tacks and Mabel Hinton fell over a cord stretched across her door and sprained her wrist. She has it bound with arnica now.”
“I don’t see how Minerva could have had time to do all those things,” broke in Molly.
There are some rare and very just natures – and Molly’s was one of them – which will not be convinced by circumstantial evidence alone.
“She would have had plenty of time,” argued Judy. “It would hardly have taken five minutes provided she had planned it all out beforehand. Besides,