Just now both chums from Tillbury were, immensely interested in the secret banquet to which twenty-five of their closest friends were to be invited. Nor was it a small task to select those two score and five out of a possible hundred—for, of course, the “primes,” or lower-grade girls, were not considered at all.
And then, there was the possibility of some of the invited guests being unwilling to attend. They had to face that from the start.
“You know very well,” said Bess, when she had digested Nan’s idea for a day or two, and grown more accustomed to it—“You know very well that wild horses wouldn’t drag May Winslow to the feast.”
“Why not?”
“You know how she feels about that place.”
“And she’s one of the very girls I want there,” cried Nan. “We want to kill superstition and have a grand feast at one fell swoop. It’s all nonsense! Some of the little girls have got hold of the foolish stories that have been told and they are almost afraid to go to bed at night in their big dormitories with all the other girls about them. It’s ridiculous!”
“Oh, dear me, Nan!” groaned her chum. “You’re too, too bold!”
“It doesn’t take much boldness to disbelieve such old-wives’ fables.”
“And your own eyesight, too?” suggested Bess, slily.
“I’ll never admit I have seen anything either spiritual or spirituous,” laughed Nan.