"But you've 'come out!'" said Ingred with satisfaction as she subsided under her eiderdown.

"Oh yes, I'm most decidedly 'out,'" murmured Quenrede.


CHAPTER XIV

The Peep-hole

The Foursome League met in Dormitory 2 after the holidays with much clattering of tongues. Each wanted to tell her own experience, and they all talked at once. Fil had a new way of doing her hair, and gave the others no peace till they had duly realized and appreciated it. Verity had been bridesmaid to a cousin, and wished to give full details of the wedding; Nora had played hockey in a Scotch team against a Ladies' Club, and had been promised ten minutes in an aeroplane, but the weather had been too stormy for the flight; the disappointment—when she happened to remember it—quite weighed down her spirits.

"If there's one thing on earth—or rather on air—I'd like to be, it's a flying woman!" she told her friends emphatically. "I'm hoping aeroplanes will get a little cheaper some day, and rich people will keep them instead of motor cars. Then I'll go out as an aviatress. It's a new career for women."

"I wouldn't trust myself to your tender mercies, thank you!" shuddered Ingred. "You'd soon bring the machine down with a crash, and smash us to smithereens."

"Indeed I shouldn't! I'd go sailing about like a bird!"

And Nora, suiting action to words, stood on her bed fluttering her arms, till Verity wickedly gave her a push behind, and sent her springing with more force than grace to the floor.