“We can’t burst the kitchen boiler, or set the cook on fire to oblige her!” objected Valentine.
“Certainly not; but there are other emergencies. With proper preparation we might engineer a very neat little Zepp raid, quite sufficient to put every theory into practice.” 72
Smiles illuminated the faces of the committee. They began to see daylight. Raymonde re-tied her hair ribbon, and continued:
“On that afternoon when I went exploring, I discovered a way on to the roof exactly over Gibbie’s bedroom. Now what you’ve got to do for the next few days is to collect old tins. There ought to be plenty of them about. You can leave the rest to me!”
The result of Raymonde’s suggestion was an extraordinary activity on the part of her friends in the acquisition of any species of discarded can. They begged empty cocoa tins from the cook, and even climbed over the wall on to the rubbish heap to rescue specimens, rusty or otherwise, that lay there unnoticed and unappropriated. Each can was furnished with four or five large pebbles inside, and was secured at the end with brown paper if the original lid was lost. They were packed in osier-plaited baskets, and hidden away in a corner of the barn until they were wanted.
Raymonde regarded her preparations with much satisfaction.
“It ought to be enough to wake the dead!” she said, rattling one of the tins in demonstration.
As has been before explained, the members of the Fourth and Fifth Forms—nineteen girls in all—slept in the huge chamber which occupied an entire wing of the house, and had been the dormitory of the French nuns a hundred years ago. The small room at the end, formerly the cell of the Mother Superior, was now the bower of Miss Gibbs. It had two doors, one leading into the passage and another into the dormitory, so that she 73 could keep an eye upon the nineteen inmates. It was a very unnecessary arrangement to have her so near, the girls considered, for she would come popping in immediately if they made a noise. They envied the Sixth, who slept in little bedrooms along the corridor, and wished Miss Gibbs had possessed a lesser sense of duty and a greater appreciation of luxury, so that she might have chosen a more comfortable and spacious bedroom elsewhere.
When sufficient tin-can ammunition had been prepared, Raymonde carried the baskets upstairs by stealth, and hid them in the lumber cupboard which she had discovered on the day she had explored the roof. They were not likely to be disturbed here, for probably no one save herself knew of the existence of the tiny room. She crept through the small door on to the tiles, and verified her position by cautious tapping, to which Morvyth, stationed in the passage below with a hockey stick, replied. Having thus taken her exact bearings, she felt that the whole plot was in good training.
“We must choose a moonlight night, or I shouldn’t be able to see my way over the roof,” she informed the committee. “Of course Zepps don’t generally come when there’s a moon, but there’ll be no time for anybody to think of that. You know your part of the business?”