“Then something without you will have to put a stop to it,” snapped Raymonde. “We’ve given you full and fair warning; so now you may look out for squalls.”
When preparation was over, the girls were allowed to amuse themselves as they liked until supper. Most of them adjourned to the garden, for the evenings were getting longer and lighter every day, and the tennis courts were in quite fair condition. It was Maudie’s habit to take a pensive stroll among the box-edged flower beds in the courtyard, and then repair to the class-room again to touch up her exercises. On this particular evening Raymonde, with a contingent of the Mystic Seven, lingered behind.
“We’ve just about ten minutes,” she announced. “Old Maudie’s as punctual as a clock. She’ll walk five times round the sundial and twice to the gate.”
“That girl’s destined for the cloister,” said Aveline pityingly. “She’s evidently thirsting to live her life by rule. Mark my words, she’ll eventually take the veil.”
“No, she’ll pass triumphantly through College and come out equal to a double-first or Senior Wrangler, or something swanky of that kind, and get made head mistress of a high school,” prognosticated Ardiune.
“In the meantime, she won’t swat any more to-night!” grinned Raymonde. “Wait for me here, girls; I’ve got to fetch something.”
Raymonde performed her errand with lightning 35 speed. She returned with a lump of soft substance in one hand, and a spirit-lamp and curling-tongs in the other. Her chums looked mystified.
“Cobblers’ wax!” she explained airily. “Brought some with me, in case of emergency. It’s useful stuff. And I just looted Linda Mottram’s curling apparatus from her bedroom. Don’t you twig? What blind bats you are! I’m going to stick up Maudie’s desk!”
Raymonde lighted the spirit-lamp and heated the tongs, then spreading a thick coating of the wax along the inside edge of the desk, she applied the hot iron to melt it, and put down the lid.
“It will have hardened by the time Maudie has finished her constitutional among the flower beds,” she giggled. “I’ll guarantee when she comes back she won’t be able to open her desk.”