ee, and Miss Wadsworth hurriedly cast about for a fitting
substitute for Hamlet.

Miss Wadsworth was middle-aged and vacillating and easily-led and
ladylike and shockable. She herself knew that she had no strength of
character; and she conscientiously strove to overcome this cardinal
defect in a chaperon, by stubbornly opposing whatever her charges
elected to do.

To-day they voted for a French farce with John Drew as hero. Miss
Wadsworth said "no" with all the firmness she could assume, and herself
picked out a drama entitled "The Wizard of the Nile," under the
impression that it would assist their knowledge of ancient Egypt.

But the Wizard turned out to be a recent and spurious imitation of the
original historical wizard. She was ultra-modern English, with a French
flavor. The time was to-morrow, and the scene the terrace of Shepherd's
Hotel. She wore long, clinging robes of chiffon and gold cut in the
style of Cleopatra along Parisian lines. Her rose-tinted ears were
enhanced by drooping earrings, and her eyes were cunningly lengthened at
the corners, in a fetching Egyptian slant. She was very beautiful and
very merciless; she broke every masculine heart in Cairo. As a climax to
her shocking career of wickedness, she _smoked cigarettes_!

Poor bewildered Miss Wadsworth sat through the four acts, worried,
breathless, horrified--fascinated; but the three girls were simply
fascinated. They thrilled over the scenery and music and costumes all
the way back in the train. Cairo, to their dazzled eyes, opened up
realms of adventure, undreamed of in the proper bounds of St. Ursula's.
The Mecca of all travel had become Shepherd's Hotel.

That night, long after "Lights-out" had rung, when Patty's mind was
becoming an agreeable jumble of sphinxes and pyramids and English
officers, she was suddenly startled wide awake by feeling two hands rise
from the darkness and clutch her shoulders on the right and left. She
sat upright with a very audible gasp, and demanded in unguardedly loud
tones, "Who's that?"

The two hands instantly covered her mouth.

"Sh-h! Keep quiet! Haven't you any sense?"

"Mademoiselle's door is wide open, and Lordy's visiting her."

Rosalie perched on the right of the bed, and Mae Mertelle on the left.

"What do you want?" asked Patty, crossly.

"We've got a perfectly splendid idea," whispered Rosalie.

"A secret society," echoed Mae Mertelle.

"Let me alone!" growled Patty. "I want to go to sle