"And Mademoiselle's idiotic nonsense! I never heard of such a silly notion as to pack you off there! She's absolutely mad!"
"Well, it can't be helped. There's no one to appeal to. Mademoiselle is as much in authority, I suppose, as Miss Forster, or Miss Bardsley, or anybody else."
"The school seems lost without Miss Drummond."
Feeling decidedly a martyr, Mabel, taking the various possessions she needed for the night, marched upstairs to the hospital.
"If it's anything catchable I'll catch it too!" Aldred called after her. "You're not to be ill up there without me! You may choose measles, or scarlatina, or anything you like; I'm quite agreeable, so long as I can have a share in it!"
"It's for Mademoiselle to decide the complaint to-morrow!" laughed Mabel, already half-way down the passage. "I don't mind what it is, so long as she doesn't declare it's suppressed smallpox, and have me re-vaccinated as a precaution. Good night!"
Aldred felt injured and aggrieved at her room-mate's banishment. It was really very tiresome and unnecessary of Mademoiselle to have insisted upon it.
"She's a Jack-in-office!" thought Aldred. "If she were head of the school, I should ask to be taken away. How particularly slow and stupid it is without Mabel! She's forgotten her bedroom slippers, by the by. I wonder if I dare take them up to her? On the whole, I think I'd better not; I suppose she'll manage without them."
It was a warm evening, and light until very late. Aldred undressed leisurely, and took a last delicious sniff at the roses that framed her window before she jumped into bed. She was tired, and dropped asleep almost immediately, falling into a confused dream, in which Mabel and Mademoiselle and measles were hopelessly mixed. The doctor had come to see Mabel, and had prescribed a huge bottle of nasty medicine, labelled "Two quarts to be taken every two hours". He was coming again, and was ring-ring-ringing at the front-door bell. Why did not one of the servants go to the door? And why was Mademoiselle sounding the gong? It was not dinner-time yet. Would nobody stop her? It would make Mabel's headache worse. In her dream, Aldred rushed downstairs, and tried to hold Mademoiselle's arm; but the clanging grew louder and louder, and with a start she awoke and sat up in her bed, half-awake.
The noise was actual fact. Somebody downstairs was hammering the gong, with frantic, jarring strokes; while the big bell that rang for classes was clanging lustily. There was a curious smell in the air, very different from the scent of the roses outside; and there was also a ruddy light, surely neither that of the moon nor of the rising sun. Before Aldred had time to do more than rub her eyes, hurried footsteps resounded along the passage, her door was flung open, and a voice cried: "Fire! Come at once!"