Armed with their sewing materials, the girls slipped one by one upstairs, and, settling themselves upon the beds in the immediate vicinity of Fauvette’s, set to work. It was a formidable task. Their comrade had brought a large assortment of garments 220 to school with her, and had happily left them unmended, trusting to take them home to be repaired. At present they were mixed in a hopeless jumble on the floor and on her bed, just where Mademoiselle had tipped out the drawers. Stockings, underclothes, gloves, handkerchiefs, photos, old letters, ribbons, ties, beads, lockets, books, and an assortment of odd treasures were lying together in utter confusion.
Fauvette brightened at the sight of her friends, mopped her eyes, and pushed back her fluffy hair from her hot forehead.
“Brace up!” Raymonde encouraged her. “We’re not going to help unless you’ll do your own share. Sort those things out, and be putting them in your drawers while we do your mending. Morvyth, take these stockings; Katherine, you’re artistic, so I’ll give you baby ribbon to thread through these bodices. Ardiune, you may mend gloves. Ave, collect those hair ribbons, and put them neatly inside that box, and stack those photos together. Why they’re not in an album I can’t imagine!”
“Because I generally sleep with one or two of them under my pillow,” confessed Fauvette. “Why shouldn’t I, if I like? There’s no harm in it. Oh! please be careful with those beads, you’ll break the strings!”
“I can’t think why you need so many empty chocolate boxes,” commented Aveline, sweeping up treasures with a ruthless hand. “Your drawers will be so full they won’t shut. Throw half of them away!”
“No, no! I always keep them to remind me of 221 the people who gave them to me. You mustn’t throw any of them away. They’re chock-full of memories.”
“Rather have them chock-full of chocs, myself!” remarked Morvyth dryly. “Fauvette, you’re interesting and pretty—when you don’t cry (for goodness’ sake look at your red eyes in the glass!); but you’re as sentimental as an Early Victorian heroine. You ought to wear a bonnet and a crinoline, and carry a little fringed parasol, and talk about your ‘papa’! If you don’t get safely engaged to an officer before you’re out of your teens, you’ll turn into one of those faded females who bore one with sickly reminiscences of their past, and spend the remainder of your life pampering a pet poodle. Here, I’ve mended two pairs of stockings for you.”
“And I’ve done three pairs,” said Raymonde, folding up the articles in question and putting them in her friend’s second long drawer. “We’re getting on. Kathy, have you finished the bodices? We’ll soon have you straightened up, Baby, and if Mademoiselle––Oh!”
Raymonde’s sudden ejaculation was caused by a vision of no less a person than Miss Gibbs, who was standing in the doorway of the dormitory regarding the sewing party in some astonishment.
“What are you girls doing here?” she demanded, making a bee-line for them among the beds.