Edna managed to remove the plaster which had stuck exceedingly fast and was not easy to get off, and then she threw herself upon the uninvited visitor who now met her Waterloo, for Janet, thus reinforced, was able to free herself and together she and Edna bound the hapless Fay and laid her upon her back on the bed.
Those outside were becoming more anxious. "Aren't you ever coming, Fay?" they asked.
"No, she isn't," replied Janet triumphantly. "We are going to keep her for company. She is so cunning, we are perfectly fascinated with her. She reminds us of our baby dolls. Go away like good girls, for you can't get in and she can't get out."
"Oh, won't I pay you back for this," said Fay, indignant that a sophomore should be thus worsted by her natural prey.
"Will you?" asked Janet pleasantly. "Now why should you want to pay us back for not allowing our room to be broken into? What do they call such a performance? I know it is some sort of crime. We will not prosecute you though, and you can tell those girls outside that you'll not go home till morning, till daylight doth appear. There is no use for them to wait."
Fay reluctantly notified her friends of her failure to carry out their plan, and they went off. It had been rather a trying experience for Fay, for in nearly every room, she had found some sort of trap set. Being the smallest and lightest in her class, as well as the cleverest in gymnastic feats, she had been chosen to defy locked doors and to climb over the transoms; then, before the occupants could be aware of her presence, to unlock the door from the inside and admit the waiting sophomores.
In one room, she had dropped directly into a tub of cold water when she let herself down from above; in another a pitfall in the shape of a long cord stretched from side to side of the room caused her to trip and fall; in a third there was such a barricade of chairs, tables and other furniture, that there was no getting behind the defense, and she was obliged to retreat. But only in the rooms occupied by Janet and Edna did she find the key gone from the door, and so she was lost. On the outside, she had been boosted up by her friends, and in this last instance, if she had been wise, she would have retreated by means of such help as a chair would furnish, and could have made her escape; but she was a little too venturesome, and was detained, in spite of all her prayers, till morning.
When Janet appeared the next day with a crimson blotch across her forehead, the only answer she made to the solicitous questions put to her was "Nightmare," but there was a general understanding that the freshmen had worsted the sophomores in this first attack.
The sophomores did not forget, however. They bided their time, and, like Brer Rabbit, they "lay low" till suspicions should be allayed, and then one triumphant night, they descended upon their sleeping victims. Fay having cleverly stolen the key of the room Janet occupied, was able to rush in with no fear of being unable to get out again. Behind her came a body of victorious sophs guarding half a dozen freshmen whom they had dragged from their beds.
"Shut the door, Fay," said the leader, Juliet Fuller; "we'll settle the business where you tell me the most rebellious of the class hold forth. You'll have to get up, Miss Ferguson; we can't allow you to entertain us in bed. You haven't a mustard plaster handy, have you, and what became of the fly-paper?"