escribed in a horrible book I read in the
holidays--_The Somnambulist_ it was called--about a man who was always
going about in the night with fixed, stony eyes, and appearing on the
tops of roofs and all sorts of spooky places. It gives me the creeps to
think of it. Ugh!"

"When people walk in their sleep it's fearfully dangerous to awaken
them," commented Daisy.

"Is it? Why?"

"Oh, it gives them such a terrible shock, they often don't get over it
for ages! You ought to take them gently by the hand and lead them back
to bed."

"And suppose they won't go?"

"Ask me a harder! I say, there's the second bell. Scootons nous vite! Do
you want to get an order mark?"

CHAPTER VIII

A Sensation

"Look here," said Betty to her room-mates that evening, "those poor
girls in No. 8 are just yearning for a sensation. Don't you think we
ought to be philanthropic and supply it for them?"

"Yearning for a what?" asked Marjorie, pausing with a sponge in her hand
and reaching for the towel.

"Yearning for a sensation," repeated Betty. "Life at an ordinary
boarding-school is extremely dull. 'The daily round, the common task',
is apt to pall. What we all crave for is change, and especially change
of a spicy, unexpected sort that makes you jump."

"I don't want to jump, thanks."

"Perhaps you don't, but those girls in No. 8 do. They're longing for
absolute creeps--only a ghost, or a burglar, or an air raid, or
something really stirring, would content them."

"I'm afraid they'll have to go discontented then."

"Certainly not. As I remarked before, we ought to be philanthropic and
provide a little entertainment to cheer them up. I have a plan."

"Proceed, O Queen, and disclose it then."

"Barbara Wright suggested it to me--not intentionally, of course. We'll
play a rag on them. One of us must pretend to sleep-walk and go into
their room. It ought to give them spasms. Do you catch on?"

"Rather!" replied the others.

"But who's going to do the sleep-walking business?" asked Irene.

"Marjorie's the best actress. We'll leave it to her. Give us a specimen
now, old sport, and show us how you'll do it. Oh, that's ripping! It'll
take them in no end. I should like to see Barbara's face."

Marjorie was always perfectly ready for anything in the way of a
practical joke, especially if it were a new variety. The girls had grown
rather tired of apple-pie beds or sewn-up nightdress sleeves, but nobody
had yet thought of s