“The ghost?”
“Yes. If you wish to call him that. But he is a ghost with a big appetite.”
“Dear me! that’s so, isn’t it?” agreed Bess. “Well! I—don’t—know—ow-oo!” Yawn—sigh—murmur, and Bess was off to the Land of Nod.
Not so Nan. She tossed about for a long time ere she could find oblivion. Her conscience pricked her, and a prickly conscience is just as unhappy a bedfellow as a porcupine would be.
What would “Momsey” and “Papa Sherwood” say if they heard of this escapade? Nan realized that she had done wrong in yielding to the seductive suggestion of the secret supper. She might have given her girl friends a treat in some way that would not have broken the school rules.
She was sorry, very sorry indeed, that she had done this. More than a few tears wet Nan Sherwood’s pillow before she finally dropped asleep. Nor had she found relief from this feeling of depression the next morning, when she went alone to Dr. Prescott’s office.
This was the first time Nan had been sent to interview the principal of Lakeview Hall for any such reason. She had quite fallen in love with Dr. Beulah Prescott on the evening of her arrival at the school; and Nan Sherwood was of too truly an affectionate disposition to hurt or offend anybody whom she loved.
“Dear, dear, Nancy Sherwood,” said the principal, in a worried way. “I never expected to receive such a report about you, of all my new girls. Leader of a party of girls that steals out of the Hall after bedtime, feasts on contraband eatables—Ahem! where’s the list of this ‘forbidden fruit’? Here it is! Sandwiches, salad, cake, chocolate and coffee, ice-cream. Dear me! dear me! what will your digestions be like if you keep on in this way?”
“I don’t know, Dr. Prescott,” Nan said faintly, as the preceptress halted for breath.
“I see no pickles, olives or cheese on the bill-of-fare,” said the doctor, lowering her lorgnette. “How is that? A schoolgirl picnic without those delectables?”