udent lamp did duty for several more. As soon as one was done, it was
popped, hissing hot, into an open mouth, and the hat-pin, charged with
another freight, returned to the charge. Cries of mingled joy and
anguish rose on every side.

"Oh, I am burnt entirely! The skin is all off my lips."

"Here, for me one!"

"No, she has had two already! Fluffy, my turn next!"

It was a merry Babel. The fun rose higher and higher. Peggy dried her
eyes, and looked on wondering. How could they hear each other? They were
all talking at once, each one faster than the other.

"My dear! Perf'ly fine, wasn't it? Oh, I do love to hear a tell--"

"When my cousin was married, she had eight bridesmaids, and they wore
just mob caps, not another thing--"

"Orange-blossoms are too sweet for anything, but they make some
people--"

"Simply pea-green, my dear, with fright, and she had blue woollen socks
on over her white slippers--'something blue,' you know,--and forgot to
take them off--"

"Her head, and you never saw anything like it in your life. It measured
three yards around, if it did--"

"A sunburst, you know, diamonds and pearls. I adore diamonds, for my
part. Why, to be married without diamonds would be--"

"Simply fierce! I should die, I know I should, before I got half-way up
the aisle. But to see one, and the music and flowers and all, is--"

"Dandy! perf'ly dandy! I wouldn't miss it for all the--"

"Flounces, my dear, up to the waist, as true as I sit here! and she said
'No!' She said: 'Before I'll be flounced to the waist, I'll--'"

"Marry a tin peddler! said there was nothing in the world she'd like
better, because then she could--"

"Sit still the whole morning without moving a muscle, for fear of
breaking her--"

"Heart, with forty pearls and sixty diamonds. Fact, I assure you, my
dear! I had it from--"

"A perfect brute, not fit for any one to--"

Here, Destiny knocked on the door; the round, rosy face of Miss Carey,
the housekeeper, looked in.

"Girls, you really must go to bed. Miss Russell sent me to say so. Do
you know what time it is?"

Grace Wolfe slipped like a shadow out of the window and was gone unseen;
the assembly broke up with laughter and cheers for the Snowy and the
Fluffy, and snatches of talk bubbling all the way along the corridor.
When Peggy reached her room, she found the Scapegoat already there,
sitting on the floor and chanting solemnly:

"I have nailed my Puggy's slippers