Miss Beasley’s method of punishment, though voted abominably unfair by the majority, was certainly efficacious. Such grave suspicion fell on the Mystic Seven that the indignant monitresses took the matter in hand, and insisted on investigating the entire business. Popular opinion raged hotly against the culprits, for the promised expedition to the river had been regarded as the treat of the term.
“I believe it’s all your fault, Raymonde Armitage!” scolded Linda Mottram. “If there’s any mischief about, one may be sure you’re at the bottom of it. We don’t want your monkey tricks here. They’re on the level of a kindergarten for little boys. If anything more of this sort happens, you may expect to find yourself jolly well boycotted. I shan’t speak to you, in any case, for a week, and I hope none of the other monitresses will. You deserve sending to Coventry by everybody.”
“How hard it is to be public-spirited!” mourned Raymonde to her chums afterwards. “I’m sure I gave everybody a treat, and especially Gibbie. I’m a martyr to the cause of emergencies. For goodness’ sake don’t any of you drink poison by mistake, or they’ll lay the blame on me and send me to the gallows!”
CHAPTER VII
The Crystal Gazers
It was about this time that a wave of the occult passed over the school. It began with Daphne Johnson, who happened to read a magazine article on “The Borderland of the Spirit World,” and it spread like an epidemic of influenza. The supernatural was the topic of the hour. Ghost stories were at a premium, and any girl who could relate some creepy spiritual experience, which had happened to the second cousin of a friend of a friend of hers, was sure of a thrilled audience. This taste for the psychic was particularly strong among the girls of the Sixth Form, who leaned towards its intellectual and scientific aspects. They despised vulgar apparitions, but discussed such abstruse problems as phantasms of the living, thought transference, will power, hypnotism, and clairvoyance. Meta Wright dabbled a little in palmistry, and examined the hands of her schoolmates, prophesying startling events in their future careers. Lois Barlow sent half-a-crown to a ladies’ newspaper to have her horoscope cast, and was terribly dejected at the gloomy prospects offered her by the planets, till she fortunately discovered that she had put the date of her birth wrong by three hours, 79 which would, of course, completely alter the aspect of the heavenly bodies, and cause the best of astrologers to err. Veronica Terry talked darkly of experiences in the psychic world, of astral bodies, etheric doubles, elemental entities, and nature spirits. She went to sleep at night with her thumbs and big toes crossed, in the hope of bringing back the adventures of her dreams into her waking consciousness. She was a little hazy on the subject, but yearned for further instruction.
“It’s called ‘Yoga’,” she confided to her particular chum, Barbara Rowlands. “You concentrate your mind before you go to sleep, and then you’re able to function in the astral body. My cousin Winnie told me of a girl at College who did it, and she was seen standing in the room of a friend at the other side of the hostel, while all the time she was asleep in bed.”
“I hope you won’t do that!” shuddered Barbara nervously. “It would give me a fit if I woke up and found you staring at me, and knew it wasn’t really you. Promise you won’t!”