“Why I thought—”
“The day isn’t over yet,” said Ned, with a wink.
At one o’clock the boys and girls gathered in the large hall. Ned’s chums noticed he was not on hand, and they looked wonderingly at each other. There was no telling when or where Ned would break out.
A program of vocal and instrumental music was rendered and then came several recitations. It was while Jennie Smith was in the midst of a dramatic rendering of a poem telling of a maiden waiting and listening for the approach of her lover. She reached the lines:
“I feel his presence near me in the mystic midnight air
I hear his footsteps coming, coming up the castle stair—”
At that moment there were, unmistakably, footsteps on the stair, only they were the stairs leading up from the court and not into a castle. Heavy footsteps they were, not at all lover-like. Up and up they came, sounding like several men with heavy boots on. Jennie paused, as she stood on the platform, and listened. The steps came nearer.
An instant later the door, which was not closed tightly, was pushed open, and into the big auditorium, in front of the pupils ambled a gentle-eyed cow, that, giving one astonished look around, uttered a loud “Moo!”