"Yes," answered Nan, looking up from her work. "Do you want it?"
"I'd like it ever so much," Bess answered. "I think it would help me with these wretched idioms that puzzle me so. Could you get it for me?"
"Surely, Bess," assented Nan, with obliging readiness. "It's down in my trunk. I'll go right down to the basement to-morrow after we finish our English recitation at twelve o'clock and get it for you."
"That's a darling, Nan," returned Bess gratefully. "I know it will help me heaps."
During this conversation their door had been standing open, and Linda Riggs, who was passing (she made occasion often to pass Nan's door), heard every word. An exultant look came into her face, and she hurried off to find Cora. She told her eagerly that at last she knew just how and when she was going to get even with that much-hated Nan Sherwood.
"What are you going to do?" asked Cora, excited and yet a little fearful of any scheme that Linda might hatch.
"I'm going to give her the scare of her life," replied Linda. "The idea came to me the other day when I was in the trunk room in the basement. The steam started to blow off with such a whistle close to my ears that it made me almost jump out of my skin. I feel sure that if the steam can only be held down for a little while and then go off with a rush it will be ten times louder. If that could be made to happen just as Sherwood was going past, it would scare her out of a year's growth. She'd think her last hour had come. The trouble has been that I never knew just when she'd be there. But I know now. I just heard her say. She's in for the biggest fright of her life. How does it strike you?"
"It sounds all right," answered Cora slowly. "But how are you going to do it?"
"Easily," said Linda, with a confident ring in her voice. "After the janitor has fixed up the fires for the day to-morrow morning he'll not be in the basement. I'll slip down before Sherwood is due to get there and tie down the valve. That'll keep the steam confined and make the shriek that much louder when it's let loose. I'll hide behind the woodpile, and just when Sherwood is opposite the furnace, I'll cut the string and—voila."
"All very fine," remarked Cora half-heartedly. "But isn't it awfully dangerous? Have you thought what might happen if you confine the steam?"