A SUPPER PARTY
"OH, goody!" Judith heard Nancy saying, "isn't it splendid that it came
on Friday! We never have anything but buns and milk after a Friday night
lecture. Your mother is an _angel_, Sally May; she must have guessed
that this was going to be a Friday without a party."
"That you, Judy?" came in Sally May's pretty voice; "come on in." And
Judith was soon seated on Sally May's couch.
The crew of the "Jolly Susan" were invited, she learned, to partake of
an elegant cold collation consisting of roast chicken, meringues, cakes,
candies, etc., etc., which Sally May's mother was thoughtfully sending
them from a caterer in town.
"Have you asked Miss Marlowe if we may have the small sitting-room?"
asked Nancy after Judith had been informed of the feast awaiting her.
"Asked--Miss Marlowe?" gasped Sally May; "well, of all the queer
schools! Ask a teacher if we may have a midnight supper? Well, I reckon
_not_!"
"Why, that's the way we do," returned Nancy; "the lecture will be over
early and then we'll go up to the sitting-room and have our feed."
"Oh, that," said Sally May, "is ridiculous and no fun at all. Why, at
Knowlton Manor we always waited until twelve o'clock, at least, and had
our feasts in the loveliest places. Once we had supper in the cellar,
and the engineer caught us and we had a terrible time bribing him; and
last June, at Miss Gray's school, five of us were caught in the
teachers' own sitting-room at three A.M."
Her hearers looked horrified enough to satisfy even Sally May, who loved
to tell a story, and she related one epic after another, until the York
audience were convinced that life would not be worth living unless they
too could recount similar tales when they went home for the Christmas
vacation.
Miss Marlowe and her rules were forgotten, and they laid their plans for
a midnight supper.
"But Miss Marlowe knows that your box has arrived," objected practical
Nancy.
"Then we'll buy some buns at tuck and have a _camouflage_ supper after
the lecture, and the real one at midnight," retorted Sally May, not to
be done out of her scheme.
"I wish we could ask Cathy, don't you?" said Josephine; "she's been such
a dear that it seems a shame to have a glorification without her."
Catherine, hard at work at her desk in her own room, caught the sound of
her name, and the next sentence in an excited voice revealed the fact
that a midnight supper was being planned for that very night. Her first
impulse, of course, was to tell the crew that she had unwittingly
overheard them, and use her influence as captain and prefect to stop the
whole proceeding; and then, because she was taking her duties as a
prefect very seriously, she stopped to consider the little escapade in a
new light.
Sally May, Catherine could see, was going to be troublesome. Already she
had chafed at several time-honoured rules and customs, for her sense of
reverence for traditions had been stifled by her ceaseless change of
residence, and Sally May was becoming exceedingly popular. Her soft
Southern voice, with its delicious inflections and its lazy drawl, was
most persuasive. The crew of the "Jolly Susan" had so far been a model
crew and Catherine had not yet had to enforce discipline, but at the
last prefects' meeting Sally May had been mentioned as the cause of two
practical jokes perpetrated in other parts of the house, and, "Such
things are not done, they are simply not done," said the School captain
severely; "Catherine, you must take Sally May in hand." Perhaps this was
her chance. She waited until the four o'clock bell scattered the
conspirators to practising and gymnasium classes and then went down to
the captain's study.
"Come in," said a clear ringing voice as Catherine knocked at Eleanor's
door; "you're just in time for tea--here, you toast the crumpets and
I'll brew the tea."
"Wait a jiffy and I'll get some jam--wild strawberry with crumpets is
heavenly."
Catherine was back in the specified jiffy, and in a few moments the two
friends were chatting comfortably over their tea-cups.
York Hill like most modern schools had adopted a modified form of
self-government. Each of the four Houses had its quota of prefects
appointed by the staff, and a House captain; the Senior House captain
was known as the Captain of the School, and this year South House had
the honour of providing the School Captain--Eleanor Ormsby. The
prefects, usually members of the various Sixth Forms, were girls who had
shown themselves worthy of responsibility and privilege and who could be
trusted to set the tone of the School.
Eleanor Ormsby was deservedly popular: there was a frankness and a
directness about her almost boyishly clear-cut face which inspired
confidence, and the girls who brought their difficulties to her found in
her a wise and sympathetic counsellor. Eleanor was not beautiful like
Catherine, not brilliant like Patricia--in fact it was with difficulty
that she held her place in the Sixth-Form classes, but on basket-ball
court, hockey-rink, or gymnasium floor she had no rival. Above all she
was a born leader, and having spent all her school days at York was
steeped in its traditions and ideals.
Just now Eleanor was keen upon getting the two plays given just before
the Christmas vacation well started before the busy time at the end of
term: it was the custom for the Old Girls to entertain the New Girls at
a play and for the New Girls to return the compliment.
So the absorbing topic of Queen's new hockey coach being exhausted for
the time being, "Got any good stuff for the play in your cubicles,
Cathy?" asked Eleanor; "looks to me as if they are a nice lively little
bunch. What a little witch Sally May is, and what lovely eyes Judy has!
I'm glad she and Nancy are such pals--they make a good team."
"They're darlings, all of 'em," said Catherine enthusiastically; "but
'not too good for human nature's daily food.'" And she unfolded the plan
for the midnight supper.
"Well, of course," said Eleanor, laughing reminiscently, "you couldn't
expect them to go home for the holidays without a story of some such
adventure as that. Remember the time we went down to the gym and Pat
fell over the dumb-bell rack."
"And it was such a mean supper to get punished for," added Catherine,
grinning; "only cold baked beans and apples. The trouble is that Miss
Marlowe is death on suppers since Christine Dawson caught pneumonia last
year when they climbed out on to the sun-parlour roof, and of course now
that I know--"
"Oh, of course we'll have to do something. But what?"
Various plans were discussed, but nothing satisfied their desire for
poetic justice until suddenly Catherine exclaimed: "I've got it! Let
them have their supper, and then we'll make them wish they hadn't--let's
lock the door of the common room (that's where they mean to go) and give
them a good long time in which to repent of their sins. I've got the
key--Miss Marlowe loaned it me for the dress rehearsals."
"Good," said Eleanor. "I'll see that the windows are kept shut during
the evening so that they won't catch cold, and I'll oil the lock at
tea-time."
And in spite of the solemnity befitting prefects, their eyes danced as
they pictured the dismay of the young sinners when they discovered
themselves caught; for prefects, notwithstanding their dignity and
general "high and mightiness," are not by any means above a bit of a
lark themselves.