“You did it so well,” Ingred assured her hastily, for Verity had gone very pink, and her voice sounded distinctly offended. “I thought the way you dropped on one knee and cried: ‘My liege lord! I am your humble socman!’ was most impressive. What made you think of ‘socman’?”
“Got it out of the history book,” said Verity, slightly mollified. “It means a man who owned land, but wasn’t quite as high up as a thane. I meant to bring in some more Saxon words, but I hadn’t time.”
“You must win the dormitory score again, and give us another performance,” urged Mrs. Best. “I’m afraid it’s too late for any more tonight, though we’re all sorry to stop. Those juniors ought to be in bed. Janie and Doreen, if you’d like a quiet half-hour to finish your prep. you may go into my room. Somebody put the tables back, please, and be sure the trestles are in their right places this time, we don’t want another collapse! Phyllis, your cough’s worse. Nurse shall rub your chest with camphorated oil, and you mustn’t kiss anybody. Betty too? I’ll give you a lozenge, but don’t suck it lying down in bed, in case you choke.”
So saying, Mrs. Best, who generally mothered the hostel, dismissed her large family and bustled away with Nurse to superintend the putting to bed of the juniors and the due care of those who might be regarded as even ever so slightly on the sick list. It was perhaps owing to the excitement of their spirited performance that the members of No. 2 Dormitory could not get to sleep that night. They all lay wide awake in bed, and told each other tales about burglars, in whispers. Verity’s stories were bloodcurdling in the extreme; she was a great reader, and had got them from magazines. Her three roommates listened with cold shivers running down their spines. According to Verity’s accounts it was a common and every day occurrence for a housebreaker to force an entrance, murder the occupants, and depart, leaving a case to baffle the police until some amateur detective turned up and solved the mystery.
“Has it ever struck you that the hostel would be a very easy place to burgle?” asked Fil. “Those French windows have no shutters, and the glass could be cut with a diamond.”
“Or the doors could be opened with a skeleton key!” quavered Nora.
“I suppose they generally wear goloshes, so as to tread softly,” ventured Ingred.
“Wouldn’t it be dreadful,” continued Verity, whose mind still ran on magazine stories, “to marry a fascinating man whom you’d met by chance, and then find out that he was a gentleman-burglar? What would you do?”
“It often happens on the cinema,” said Nora. “The girl wavers about in an agony whether to tell or not, and wrings her hands and rolls her eyes, like they always do roll them on the films, and then, just when things are at the very last gasp, the husband tumbles over a precipice, or is wrecked at sea, or smashed in a railway accident, and she marries the other, who’s as good as gold, and loved her first.”
“Is the man who loves you first always as good as gold?” asked Fil.
“Well, generally on the Pictures. He’s loved you as a child, you see. You come on the film hand in hand, in socks, and he gives you his apple.”
“But suppose they don’t love you from a child?” said Fil plaintively. “I’ve only known a lot of horrid little boys whom I didn’t care for in the least. None of them ever gave me his apple, though I remember one taking mine. Is the first fascinating man I meet the true lover or the burglar? How am I to know which is which?”
“You’d better let me be there to decide for you, child, or you’ll be snapped up by the first adventurer that comes along,” declared Nora. “Don’t trust him if he has a mustache. ‘Daring Dick of the Black Gang’ had a little twisted mustache like Mephistopheles in Faust.”
“Oh dear! And the last piece I saw on the Pictures, the villain was clean shaven! That’s no guide at all!”
“Girls, you’re breaking the silence rule!” said Mrs. Best, opening the door of Dormitory 2, where the conversation, which had begun in whispers, had risen to a pitch audible on the landing outside. “This doesn’t look like scoring again next week, and giving another performance. Why, Nora, the rain’s driving through that open window straight on to your bed! You’ll be getting rheumatism! I shall shut it, and leave the door wide open for air instead. Now be good girls and go to sleep at once. Don’t let me hear any more talking.”
The Foursomes, in common with most of the hostel, were fond of Mrs. Best, so they turned over obediently, and composed themselves to slumber. They were really tired by this time, and dropped off into the land of Nod before the clock on the stairs had chimed another quarter. How long she slept, Ingred did not know. She dreamt quite a long and circumstantial dream of wandering on the cliffs near the sea with a gentleman-burglar, who was telling her his intention of raiding Buckingham Palace and taking away the Crown Jewels, and she heard his daring designs (as we always do in dreams) without the slightest surprise or any suggestion that the Crown Jewels are kept at the Tower instead of at Buckingham Palace. She woke suddenly, and laughed at the absurdity of the idea. She felt hot, and threw back her eiderdown. The other girls were sleeping quietly, and the rain was still beating against the window in heavy showers, for it was a stormy night. The door of
