“I’d like to see her! That would just about settle Maude Grimshaw in this school. If her father had as much money as King Midas, and Maude lived to be as old as Methuselah, she could never live down such a thing. No indeed! There! here’s Sixty-two.”
Beth knew Mamie Dunn, but she did not know who welcomed her into the room. Everybody in the apartment wore a red mask, and at first the new girl was not able to recognize any one.
It was a chafing-dish party. A tall girl in a striking red and black kimono (somehow Beth thought she must be the senior, Miss Teller)—the kimono itself well fitted to clothe one who did deeds of magic—presided over a cheese dish warranted, as Molly said, to give everybody “dreams of the rabbit fiend.”
There was bottled ginger ale and tea and coffee. Such a combination to go into one’s stomach at such a late hour would ruin the digestion of anybody but a boarding-school girl.
Beth, even at this party, could not but compare her own state with that of the other twenty-five or thirty girls present. There were all sorts and conditions of kimonos; but all were of very much richer material than her own pretty, but cheap, cotton crêpe.
She was really sure of the identity of nobody save Molly at first. But she began to enjoy herself, for she was not left alone. She tried to disguise her voice in answering questions, and so puzzle the others.
The laughter was subdued, although the walls were thick and the doors sound-proof. One girl frequently ventured into the corridor to peer about. There was a delicious feeling of uncertainty and peril that spiced this “red-head” party.
The guessing of each other’s identity was a popular pastime, and when they held a mock court, with the tall girl in the red and black kimono as judge, and appointed two guards to bring culprits before the bar for identification, the fun waxed boisterous.
Sometimes the girls guessed who the prisoner was very quickly; at other times they shot broad of the mark, as was attested by the gaiety of the one under examination.
But when Beth was seized and forced before the girl in the red and black kimono, there fell a little hush of expectation. It seemed to the new girl as though many of these present had been waiting for just this event.