or which led to the
monitresses' rooms. She had inserted her screws earlier in the
evening, so with the aid of a pair of pliers, purloined from the
wood-carving bench, it did not take her long to fix her wire and
secure the door. She came back chuckling.

"If they should hear any slight sounds of revelry, and try to come
upon the scenes, they'll just find themselves jolly well locked in!"
she remarked with gusto.

"Perhaps they'll think Mademoiselle's done it!" suggested Ardiune.

Preparations for the feast were proceeding briskly. Two beds, pulled
into the middle of the room, formed the table, and on these the
comestibles were spread forth. The village shops had not offered a
very wide range of dainties, but there were sardines, and canned
peaches, and biscuits, and three Huntley & Palmer's cakes, rather dry,
because they had been kept in a tin box, probably since last
Christmas. The drinkable was lemon kali, served in bedroom tumblers,
and stirred up with lead-pencils or tooth-brush handles.

Everybody was busy. Morvyth and Valentine were opening the tins with
wood-carving implements; Ardiune was performing an abstruse
arithmetical calculation as to how to cut up three cakes into nineteen
exactly even portions, while Katherine waited with the penknife ready.
Even the hitherto irreproachable Maudie Heywood and Cynthia Greene
were occupied with scissors, making plates out of sheets of exercise
paper. Beds drawn up alongside the impromptu table served for seats,
and the girls crowded together as closely as they could. Raymonde and
Morvyth, by virtue of their expedition to the shops, were voted
mistresses of the ceremonies, and dispensed the provisions. Sardines
on biscuits were the first course, followed by canned peaches, the
juiciness of which was a decided difficulty, as there was not a
solitary spoon with which to fish them up from the tin.

"Never mind, I'll spear them with a lead-pencil and stick them on
biscuits, and you must drink the syrup in the glasses. I dare say
it'll mix all right with lemon kali," purred Raymonde, thoroughly in
her element as hostess.

The fun waxed furious, and it only increased when the sardine tin
upset in the middle of one of the temporary tables.

"But it's my bed!" wailed Cynthia Greene.

"Cheer up! Someone's got to make a sacrifice for the good of the
assembly, and you see the lot's fallen on you," said Raymonde
consolingly. "You ought to be proud to have your bed chosen!"