"Well, as far as sports are concerned, I don't see there's much we can do. Duane is the only one who is much good at them. I'm forced to be a looker-on, worse luck. Somebody wants to explode a bomb-shell in our midst and wake everybody up."
The seven seniors duly met. Hilary and Kitty were the first arrivals. They found Duane sprawling in the easy-chair with a book in her lap, and Frances, enveloped in an overall of bird-of-paradise hue, busily dabbing at a large sheet of paper mounted on an easel.
"Come in, come in," called out the head prefect, in her soft drawl. "I know France is taking up all the room with her horrible mess, but you'll just have to sit down where you can—so long as you don't sit down on tubes of paint. You see what I have to put up with every day! Lumps of putty—I mean clay—everywhere."
"Don't rot, Duane," said France. "Art's a serious matter. There's nothing funny about it, as some people seem to think."
"'Tisn't the art that's funny, my dear," returned Duane. "It's the artist."
"'But what is it supposed to be?" inquired Hilary, surveying the artist's work with puzzled face.
The others, who had now all arrived, proffered various suggestions.
"A storm at sea," said Margaret.
"A futurist—or is it a cubist?—portrait of a lady," suggested Bertha.
"No. I've got it!" exclaimed Hilary. "One of those puzzle thingummies. Little Red Riding Hood walking through the wood. Find the wolf."