“Hush!” returned Nan. She was worried by the happening. The raid on their feast, the information evidently lodged about their frolic with Mrs. Cupp, and this “black thing” that had startled them all, seemed to be all parts of a plot.
“And it chased me!” Mrs. Cupp went on. “I declare, I never was so frightened in all my life! It chased me right to this door——”
“It really was lucky we were here, then, wasn’t it?” put in Laura, to clinch the point.
Mrs. Cupp bit into a chicken sandwich, and frowned. “I don’t know about that,” she said slowly. “I never would have come back by the shore road if I hadn’t heard of what you girls were doing here. I don’t know but that I consider you are the cause of my being so frightened,” she concluded grimly.
CHAPTER XXII
PUNISHMENT
Mrs. Cupp proved that she possessed a hearty appetite, and that the fright she had suffered had not impaired it. She accepted a second helping of salad and two plates of ice-cream followed, with several fancy cakes.
“I must say,” she observed, in a more cordial mood than any of the girls had ever seen her display before. “I must say that whoever chose these refreshments showed more regard for your digestions than usually is the case in such midnight feasts. And as I remember my own schooldays, we never had anything on such occasions that was really fit for a girl to put in her stomach.”
“Oh, Mrs. Cupp!” exclaimed Laura, “did you really have parties like this when you were a girl at boarding school?”
“I was just saying, Laura, that they were not like this,” returned the matron. “But schoolgirls are all alike, if banquets are not.”