COVERING THEIR TRACKS.
When the dressing bell rang next morning, three heavy-eyed and extremely
weary young women felt obliged to pull themselves together and appear at
the breakfast table. Judy had caught cold, and to disguise this
condition had plastered pink powder on her nose, and now held her breath
almost to suffocation to avoid coughing in public.
"Have you heard the news?" demanded Jessie, hurrying in late and sitting
next to Nance.
"Why, no. What is it?" asked Nance calmly.
Molly felt the color rising in her cheeks, and Judy buried her snuffles
in a long letter from her mother.
"There's the greatest tale going around the Quadrangle! Everybody is
talking about it," continued Jessie. "One of the chambermaids started
it, I think, because she told it to me just now."
"What is it?" asked Edith Williams impatiently.
"Some of the Quadrangle girls were out last night gallivanting. They
climbed through the Tower Room window, left a bench outside and the
window open. I suppose the watchman frightened them before they could
hide all traces."
"That sounds like a wild freak," commented Katherine. "What do you
suppose they were doing?"
"They might have been doing lots of things," replied Jessie
mysteriously. "The maid said the watchman thought they had been driving
or motoring with some Exmoor boys."
"Whew!" ejaculated a sophomore. "I'm sorry for them if they are found
out. I happen to know Prexy's feelings about escapades like that."
"Why? Were you ever caught?"
"No, of course not. Don't you see me sitting here at the table? But my
older sister was in the class with a girl who was caught. She was a
campus girl."
"What happened to her?" demanded Judy, forgetting her cold in the
interest of the story.
"Bounced," answered the sophomore briefly.
The Williamses and Jessie looked at Judy with mixed feelings of
surprise; not because they noticed her cold or regarded it with any
suspicion, but because, when they had parted company with her the night
before she had been in the throes of a jealous rage and had spoken most
insultingly to her best friend. Their glances shifted to Molly. The two
girls were seated side by side. Judy was leaning affectionately against
Molly's shoulder while they looked together at a picture post card sent
by Mary Stewart from France.
"All bets are off," whispered Edith to her sister. "They have made it
up. Molly is an angel of forgiveness. We were wrong for once."
"And Margaret was correct."
"A pound of Mexican kisses and two pounds of mixed chocolates," said
Margaret in Edith's other ear. "I've won my bet, I hope you'll take
notice."
"We were just taking notice," answered Edith.
"But there's some more of the story," piped out Jessie again. "Don't you
want to hear the most exciting part?"
"Heavens, yes. Did they catch them?" asked several voices.
"No, no, but one of the girls was wet," announced Jessie impressively.
"She left a trail of water after her all the way up the steps."
"I should think they could have traced her by that," said Margaret.
"They could have if she had kept on trailing, but she must have
remembered and held up her skirt, for it stopped right there."
"Wise lady," put in Katherine.
"She must have been canoeing and not driving, then," observed Margaret.
"Else why the significant fact of wet clothes?"
"Nice night to go canoeing in, cold and dark. Strange notion of
pleasure," remarked Edith.
"Well, there's more still to come," announced Jessie, when they had
finished commenting on this remarkable escapade.
"For heaven's sake, Jessie, you're like a serial story of adventure--a
thriller in every chapter. What now?"
"Well," said Jessie, "you may well prepare for a thriller this time. The
watchman found something."
"What? What?" they cried, and Nance, Judy and Molly joined in the chorus
with as much excitement as any of the others.
"He found a slipper."
Judy made an enormous effort to keep her hand from trembling, as she
raised her coffee cup to her dry, feverish lips. Molly, as usual under
excitement, changed from white to red and red to white. Nance alone
seemed perfectly calm.
"I don't see how they can prove anything by that," she observed. "There
are probably fifty girls or even a hundred who wear the same size shoes
here. Molly is the only girl I know of who wears a peculiar size, six
and a half triple A."
"Well, 'one thing is certain and the rest is lies,' as old Omar
remarked," said Margaret, rising from the table, "and that is, all
juniors can prove an alibi last night. No junior would ever go
gallivanting on the night of the junior play."
"Hardly," answered Nance, who had risen to the occasion with fine spirit
and tact. Molly's face resumed its normal color and Judy looked
relieved.
"The thing they will have to do," said Edith, "is to find the other
slipper. And if the owner of that slipper takes my advice she'll drop it
down the deepest well in Wellington County."
Molly and Nance and Judy hurried through breakfast and rushed back to
their apartment. They locked all the doors carefully and gathered in
Judy's room.
"We have nearly fifteen minutes before chapel," said Nance, speaking
rapidly. "Judy, are your things dry? Get them quickly. They may search
our rooms. Miss Walker is pretty determined once she's roused, I hear."
Judy gathered up the stiff, rough-dry garments that had been hanging on
the heater all night, while Molly found tossed in a corner the mate to
the fatal slipper. Judy held up Viola's dress of old rose velvet.
"It's ruined," she exclaimed, "and that's another complication.
Suppose----"
"Don't suppose," interrupted Molly hastily, snatching the dress away
from her. "Hurry, Nance, where shall we put them?"
For a temporary safe hiding place they chose the interior of the upright
piano. Then they hastily made their beds, set their dressing tables to
rights and dashed off to chapel just as the matron appeared on an
ostensible tour of inspection.
It was possible that she was not being very vigilant with the juniors,
however, that particular morning, knowing that they were one and all
engaged in producing a very important play the night before. At any
rate, she only glanced casually around, saw nothing incriminating and
departed to the next room.
The president looked grave and worried at chapel, but, contrary to
expectations, she had nothing to say after the prayer.
"It's a bad sign," observed a student. "When Prexy doesn't say anything,
she means business."
Except for a few moments at lunch, the three girls did not meet in
private consultation again until late in the afternoon. There was a busy
sign on their study door. Molly smiled knowingly to herself, and gave
the masonic tap.
"It's a good idea," she thought, "and will keep out inquisitive people
until we decide what to do."
She found Judy stretched on the sofa, feverish and coughing, while Nance
was dosing her with a large dose of quinine and an additional dose of
sweet spirits of niter.
"You're going to kill me, Nance," Judy was grumbling.
"For heaven's sake, be quiet," scolded Nance. "You haven't any voice to
waste. Molly, will you make her a hot lemonade? I think we had better
get her to bed and cover her up with all the comforts so as to bring on
a perspiration."
"Only one?" inquired Judy.
"Get up from there and go to bed," ordered Nance. "The inspection is
over and there won't be any chance of another one to-day. You'll have to
miss supper to-night. We'll say you have one of your sick headaches."
Judy obediently got out of her things while Molly flew around making hot
lemonade, and Nance hung a blanket over the heater and pulled down their
three winter comforts off a shelf in the closet.
Judy meekly allowed herself to be smothered under a mountain of covers,
while she drank the lemonade with childish enjoyment.
"You always make good ones, Molly, darling, because you put in enough
sugar. I'll probably be melted into a fountain of perspiration like
Undine, only she went away in tears," she complained presently.
"That's the object of the treatment," answered Nance sternly. "Whatever
is left of you after the melting process is over is quite well of the
cold."
Molly could have laughed if she had not been thinking of something else
very hard.
The two girls sat down on the divan and began a subdued and earnest
conversation.
"What are we to do with these things, Molly? We can't leave them in
the piano because the moment some one sits down to play we'll be
discovered."
"Murderers take up the planks in the floor and hide their bloodstained
clothing underneath," observed Molly. "But we can't do that, of course."
They took the bundle from its hiding place and looked over the garments.
"I have an idea," announced Nance, who had many practical notions on the
subject of clothes. "Suppose we take the dress to the cleaner's in the
village and have it steamed."
"Why can't we steam it ourselves over the tea kettle?" demanded Molly.
"We can and we'll do it right now and press it on the wrong side. If it
hadn't been so much admired, it wouldn't matter so very much, but some
one's sure to ask to see it or borrow it or something. How about the
underclothes? Can't we smooth them out with a hot iron before they go to
the laundry?"
They set to work at once to heat water and irons, and presently were
engaged in restoring the old rose velvet to a semblance of its former
beauty.
"What are we going to do about that slipper?" demanded Molly, pausing in
her labors.
"I've made up my mind to that," replied Nance. "We must bury it."