WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST.
"Gee, but I'm hungry!" exclaimed Dum, as we trailed our sheeted forms up
the stairs. "Did you ever see such slim eats in all your life? Why, my
cake was cut so thin and my ice cream was so scant, they could not have
passed muster even at a church fair!"
"Shh! Don't say a word, but I've got a box under my mattress. You let
Annie and Mary know, while I see Jean Rice and Nancy Blair. We'll meet
in the Gym at eleven. I believe we will be safe from old Mr. Ryan. He is
sure to keep away from there as he knows that the skull lanterns are
still up. We had better not try to have the spread in our room as we are
so close to teachers. Tell Mary and Annie to get their dummies ready and
tell Dee to start on ours. I'll be up just as soon as I put Jean and
Nancy on."
Jean Rice and Nancy Blair were two girls we had been seeing a good deal
of. They were full of fun and while they were rather a frivolous pair,
they were nice and good tempered and always ready for a lark. You could
count on them to join in on any hazardous expedition.
When eleven o'clock struck we were ready to repair to the Gym for our
secret repast. We kept on our sheets and masks as part of the fun. We
had made our dummies ready and tucked them in their little downies
before we ventured forth. The corridors were dark and silent. The Gym
was at the far end of the building from us, down two flights of stairs.
We judged it prudent to separate and go one by one a few seconds apart
as, if we should by chance run against any one in authority, it was
easier for one to escape than five. I went first, the box of fried
chicken clasped in my arms: Dum followed me with the beaten biscuit;
then came Mary with ham sandwiches; and Annie close behind her,
carefully hugging the caramel cake, too timid to let the space be too
great between her and her friend. Dee valiantly brought up the rear
with stuffed eggs and pickles.
We found three girls instead of two waiting in the gymnasium. I thought
Jean and Nancy had brought a friend and went up to make her welcome.
They had lighted some of the pumpkin and skull lanterns and were
standing with an air of expectancy.
"Hello, girls!" I whispered, "you beat us to it, didn't you? Which of
you is which?"
"You tell us who you are first," demanded one of the figures, "and then
we will tell you."
"I am Page Allison. I bet you are Nancy Blair."
There was a giggle from the masks. It was another bunch of Juniors on
pleasure bent. They were waiting for five more girls and were going to
have a spread and a ghost dance.
It turned out that what one might call the cream of the Junior class was
gathered there. If we got caught, it meant the whole class in disgrace,
as it would be a well-known fact that the members of the class who were
missing were so only because they were not asked to be present. It gave
us a great feeling of security to be fifteen strong. We were seven and
these eight more girls brought the number of law breakers up to fifteen.
There were only twenty-five Juniors in the school and that left ten
girls who were either too goody-goody to be included or not sufficiently
attractive, which is not in itself a crime but is certainly unfortunate.
The spread was wonderful. The little dabs of ice cream and cake we had
been served at the party had only whetted our appetites and in no way
diminished them. We ate in silence broken by whispers and giggles. We
hoped the teachers and Miss Plympton were safe in their downies and we
trusted in Mr. Ryan's superstitious nature to keep him out of the Gym.
The ghost dance began later and was kept up buoyantly, without music
except a weird rhythmic whistling that the dancers themselves furnished.
This whistling is done by sucking in and never blowing out and the
effect is most uncanny. It is very hard on your wind to whistle this
way, but when your breath gives out, your partner picks up the tune
where you leave off and keeps the ball rolling.
The last candle burned down to its socket and guttered out, and then the
spectres flitted back to their rooms. It was pitch black in the
corridors and Annie was afraid to go alone, so we formed a cordon by
catching hold of hands and crept along, keeping close to the walls. I
was in front and once when we were quite near our rooms I came bang
against a human hand groping along the wall towards me. I stopped dead
still! It was all I could do to keep from squealing right out, but a
sound of scurrying down the hall reassured me. It was just a student as
afraid of being caught as I was.
"Who goes there?" I demanded in stern and grown-up tones.
No answer but more scurrying and in a moment the sound of a door
cautiously closed.
"Some poor girl scared to death," I thought. We found our rooms in the
dark and with the help of an electric search light, the pride of Dee's
heart, we snatched our poor dummies out of their warm beds and were soon
snuggled down in their places.
"How do you reckon it happened there were no lights in the halls?"
whispered Dum.
"Nancy Blair told me she had turned them out on purpose," said Dee. "She
said she knew we would get caught if there was any light."
"Good for Nance!" I murmured, and knew no more until morning. I can't
believe we had done anything so very wrong or we could not have slept so
soundly.
The rising gong found us dead to the world and only the telephone call,
three knocks on the wall, aroused us.
"Trouble ahead!" whispered Mary Flannagan, "there was some one snooping
around last night after we were all in bed."
"Well, we can prove an alibi. Who was it?" I chattered through the
'phone. I had jumped out of bed and was huddled in the closet behind
Dum's dress. The window was still up and the heat turned off.
"You sound scared! Do you think they will catch us?"
"Scared! Not a bit of it! I am just cold. Of course, they won't catch
us,--thanks to having abolished the honour system," and I hung up the
receiver and commenced the Herculean task of getting Tweedles out of
bed.
"Get up!" I urged, pulling the cover off of first one then the other. "I
don't see what you would have done without a roommate. I'd like to know
who would wake you up."
Dee put her head under the pillow like an ostrich trying to evade
pursuit and Dum curled up in a little ball like a big caterpillar when
you tickle him with a piece of grass.
"Girls! Get up! I tell you Mary says there is some mischief brewing. We
had better get up and be down to breakfast in time with smiling morning
faces or Miss Plympton will know who was up late feasting. Me for a cold
bath!"
"Me, too!" tweedled the twins, coming to life very rapidly.
A cold plunge and vigorous rubbing took off all traces of the night's
dissipations, and as a finishing touch we all of us let our hair hang
down our backs in plaits. Since the summer we had with one accord turned
up our hair. We felt that it added dignity to our years; but now was no
time for dignity but for great simplicity and innocence.
As the breakfast gong sounded, I am sure in all Virginia there could not
be found five more demure maidens than tripped punctually into the
dining room. Miss Plympton looked sharply up as we came in, but we felt
we had disarmed her with the very sweet bows we gave her and the gentle
"good mornings."
There was an air of repressed excitement running through the school. We
were dying to ask what it was but felt that silence on our part was the
only course for us to pursue. Certainly there were fifteen very
shiny-eyed Juniors and ten very smug-looking ones. I whispered to Nancy
Blair as I passed her table on the way out:
"What's up?"
"I am not sure, but I do not believe they are on to our frolic."
"There is something else," declared Jean Rice, who sat next to her chum,
Nancy. "The servants are in a great state of excitement over something.
I have had an oatmeal spoon and a butter knife spilled down my neck
already and I see Miss Plympton's private cream pitcher has found its
way to our table."
"Well, we will find out what is the matter in Chapel," I sighed, as I
hurried up to my room to put it to some kind of rights. I wanted to get
our dummies pulled to pieces, leaving no semblance of human beings. We
had twenty minutes between breakfast and Chapel to make our beds and do
what cleaning to our rooms we considered necessary to pass inspection. I
tell you we cleaned that room with what Mammy Susan called "a lick and a
promise." Our dummies we pulled to pieces and scattered their members
to the four winds, like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, when the
winged monkeys got him. The telephone we concealed even more carefully
than usual, draping a sweater over it and smoothing out Dum's dress so
no suspicious wrinkle remained.
"We weren't in our beds very long, so let's spread 'em," said Dee,
suiting the action to the word and pulling up her sheets in the most
approved unhygienic manner. We swept the dirt under the rugs and with a
few slaps of a dust rag on bureau, chairs and tables, and a careful
lowering of the shade so the light came in sufficiently softened not to
show the dust, we betook ourselves to Chapel as the gong sounded,
quaking inwardly but with that "butter won't melt in my mouth"
expression we considered suitable for the occasion.
Miss Plympton was on the platform waiting for the teachers and pupils to
assemble. She had on a stiff, new, dark gray suit that fitted her like
the paper on the wall and she was making chins so fast there was no
keeping up with them.
"Looks like tin armor and I tell you she is ready for a joust, too!"
exclaimed Dum.
Without any warning at all, Miss Plympton opened the Bible at the tenth
chapter of Nehemiah and began to read:
"'Now those that sealed were Nehemiah, the Tirshatha, the son of
Hachaliah, and Zidkijah, Seraiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pashur, Amariah,
Malchijah, Hattush, Shebaniah, Malluch, Harim, Meremoth, Obadiah,
Daniel, Ginnethon, Baruch, Meshullam, Abijah, Mijamin, Maaziah, Bilgai,
Shemaiah: these were the priests.'"
I heard a sharply intaken breath from Dee. I also noticed the shoulders
of a girl a few seats ahead of me shaking ominously.
Miss Plympton proceeded: "'And the Levites: both Jeshua, the son of
Azaniah, Binnui of the sons of Henadad, Kadmiel; And their brethren
Shebaniah, Hodijah, Kelita, Pelaiah, Hanan, Micha, Rehob, Hashabiah,
Zaccur, Sherebiah, Shebaniah, Hodijah, Bani, Beninu,'----"
Other shoulders were shaking and Dee buried her face in her hands. There
was an unmistakable snort from a dignified Senior. One of the tiny
little girls giggled outright and suddenly without any one knowing how
it started, the whole school was in a roar.
Now it is not so difficult to come down on a few offenders, but when a
whole school goes to pieces what is the one in command to do? It wasn't
that there was anything so very humorous in the tenth chapter of
Nehemiah, but the way Miss Plympton read it; the way she rattled off
those impossible names with as much ease as she would have shown in
calling the roll, the way she looked in her tight new suit,--just the
way the whole school felt, anyhow--a kind of tense feeling that
something was going to happen, made our risibles get the better of us.
Everything in the room rocked with laughter except Miss Plympton. She
just made chins.
The teachers on the platform were as bad as the students. Miss Ball was
completely overcome and the very dried-up instructor in mathematics had
to be led off the platform in the last stages of hysterics. Margaret
Sayre told me afterwards that she was very glad to do the leading as she
herself was at the bursting point.
Miss Plympton looked at the giggling and roaring mass of girls and
quietly went on reading in her hard even tones, her voice slightly
raised, however: "'The chief of the people: Parosh, Pahath-moab, Elam,
Zatthu, Bani, Bunni; Azgad, Bebai, Adonijah, Bigvai, Adin, Ater'----"
The laughter of some of the girls changed to weeping and about half the
school had hysterics. Miss Plympton did not understand girls at all, but
she understood them well enough to know that when once hysterics gets
started in a crowd of girls there is no more stopping it than a stampede
of wild cattle.
I hate sacrilege, but for the life of me I can't see why any one should
think that any human being could get any good or spiritual strength for
the day from listening to the tenth chapter of Nehemiah. I never heard
of a school breaking out into hysterics over the twenty-third Psalm or
the Sermon on the Mount. Why should not a suitable thing be chosen to
read to young people?
Miss Plympton was furious, but whatever she said to the pupils, she
would have to say to the teachers, so she held her peace and after
making some hundred or so chins she had prayers and then a mild hymn.
The storm had subsided except for an occasional sniff. Some of the most
hysterically inclined had been forced to leave the assembly room and
these came sneaking back during the singing of the hymn. The Math
teacher had to go to bed and we all with one accord blessed Sheribiah,
Shebiniah, Hodijah, Bani, and Beninu.