"What?"
"I haven't quite fixed it up yet, but I'll tell you later on."
The girls from Chagmouth dined daily with the boarders in the hostel, and were on very good terms with most of them. Fay could therefore be tolerably sure of a certain amount of support in any scheme she chose to evolve. She thought things over during the French class, a process of mental abstraction which brought the wrath of Mademoiselle on to her head, for she answered at random and made some really idiotic mistakes, at which the other girls giggled.
"You didn't shine this morning, old sport!" whispered Beata when the class was over. "I believe Mademoiselle thought you were ragging her!"
"I wasn't doing anything of the sort. Can't you all realise it's the
Fourth of July?"
"You've mentioned that once or twice before!"
"Well, I'll mention it again. Of course I focus my mind on America, not on France! You can't expect me to go jabbering French when I think of the times my friends will be having to-day on the other side of the Atlantic. I've had rather a brain throb though. We'll dress up after dinner in anything we can borrow, and have a parade on the tennis lawn, with prizes for best costumes."
"Who's to give the prizes?"
"I will. I'll ask Maude to buy me some packets of candy when she goes home, and bring them to school this afternoon. They'll do all right."
Fay was discreet enough not to mention her project to Iva or Nesta, in case, being hostel monitresses, they might have felt bound to offer conscientious objections. Members of the Fourth and Third forms, however, jumped at the idea of an impromptu fancy-dress parade, and the moment they were released from the dining-room they tore off to array themselves. It was already a quarter to two, and school would begin again at 2.30, so there was no time to be lost if the thing was to be done at all.