Dona did not reply. She pretended to be asleep already.
"It sounds like a mouse," volunteered Nellie Mason.
"Oh, good gracious! I hope it's not in the room."
The old saying, "as quiet as a mouse", is not always justified in solid fact. On this occasion the two small intruders made as much noise as tigers. They began to gnaw the skirting board, and the sound of their sharp little teeth echoed through the room. Mona waxed quite hysterical.
"If it runs over my bed I shall shriek," she declared.
"Perhaps it's not really in the room, it's probably in the wainscot," suggested Beatrice Elliot.
"I tell you I heard it run across the floor. Oh, I say, there it is again!"
The frolicsome pair continued their revels for some time, and kept the girls wide awake. When Mona fell asleep at last it was with her head buried under the bed-clothes. Very early in the morning Dona got up, tempted her pets back with some cheese which she had brought from The Tamarisks, and put the cage into her wardrobe again.
Directly after breakfast Mona went to Miss Jones, and on the plea that her bed was so near the window that she constantly took cold and suffered from toothache, begged leave to exchange quarters with Ailsa Donald, who had a liking for draughts, and was willing to move out of No. 2 into No. 5. Miss Jones was accommodating enough to grant permission, and the two girls transferred their belongings without delay.
"I wouldn't sleep another night in that dormitory for anything you could offer me," confided Mona to her particular chum Kathleen Drummond. "I simply can't tell you what I suffered. I'm very sensitive about mice. I get it from my mother—neither of us can bear them."