From the recesses of their memories the girls raked up every superstition of which they had ever heard. These had to be divided into the possible and the impossible. There are limits of liberty in a girls' school, and it was manifestly infeasible, as well as very chilly, to attempt to stray out alone at the stroke of twelve, robed merely in a nightgown, and fetch three pails of water to place by one's bedside. Gowan's north country recipe for divination was equally impracticable—to go out at midnight, and "dip your smock in a south-running spring where the lairds' lands meet," then hang it to dry before the fire. They discussed it quite seriously, however, in all its various aspects.
"To begin with, what exactly is a smock?" asked Carmel.
Everybody had a hazy notion, but nobody was quite sure about it.
"Usen't farm laborers to wear them once?" suggested Lilias.
"But Shakespeare says,
"'When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When ring the woods with rooks and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,'"
objected Prissie.
"Was it an upper or an under garment?" questioned Noreen.
"I'm sure I don't know. I don't fancy we any of us possess 'smocks'!"
"Then we certainly can't go and soak them in a spring!"