Boarders and day-girls alike collected disconsolately in the playroom. Miss Pollard had given orders that nobody was to go home until the heavy shower was over, so the whole school were temporary prisoners.
Mavis, sitting on one of the lockers, and listening to the general grousing going on around her, shook herself impatiently.
"What a set of stupids they are," she whispered to Merle. "Always down in the dumps about everything. Can't we wake them up somehow? I vote we get up an impromptu stunt. It would be more fun than sitting grumbling. Why shouldn't we do that scene we had at the Whinburn High last term? You remember? Aunt Laetitia, I mean. You take the aunt, and I'll take Adelaide, and Iva and Nesta could be Dora and Marjorie. We'd explain their parts to them directly, there isn't much for them to do except back up Adelaide."
"Topping!" agreed Merle. "There'll be heaps of time. Here come Iva and Nesta. I'll take them into the cloakroom and coach them while you suggest the idea. It ought to catch on surely. I'll leave you to explain."
Merle secured Iva and Nesta and bore them off to give them a hasty outline of the sketch which they were to produce. Mavis meantime mounted a chair, and, clapping her hands to secure attention, made her proposal.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she started humorously. "I always begin 'Ladies and Gentlemen', even if there aren't any gentlemen present, because it's the proper thing to say and sounds nice. If you don't mind listening to me for a moment there's something I want to suggest to you. This rain is the absolute limit, and it's rather grizzly we can't go out to hockey. As we're all boxed up here, how would you like a ten minutes' stunt? Merle and I and two others can give you a short sketch if you care to listen. Anybody who wants to act audience, please squat on the floor."
BOTH MAVIS AND MERLE LET THEMSELVES GO