“My mother always said I could outsleep the sleepiest of the ‘Seven Sleepers’ and I guess she was right. But I’m not the only one, Where’s Miss Woodruff all this time? I thought she never slept.”
“Well, she did tonight,” said Anne, supposing she was telling the truth. “And it’s lucky for us that she did.”
“But how did you ever move Lillian and Augusta without waking them?”
“We didn’t. Lillian jumped up the minute we touched her but Jane told her what we were doing so she pitched right in and helped. But Augusta woke right up in the middle of the corridor and began to bleat like the lost sheep of Israel so Henrietta stuffed a stocking in her mouth—one of your thick woolen ones—and jammed her into the clothes press. We had quite a time explaining that we were not the burglar. We handed her Jane’s flashlight so she could see it was us; but she turned it on herself and that frightened her more than ever. She shivered and made queer noises, so Maude had to sit beside her on a lot of shoes and hold her hand for the longest time—and you know Maude hates to hold hands; but Augusta’s all right now. Now move over, Vicky, and take another of your famous naps. You’re welcome to half of my bed as long as you don’t take your half out of the middle.”
The burglar scare subsided gradually and Victoria returned to her own corridor to room with Gladys de Milligan.
“I wouldn’t have picked her out,” sighed Victoria, “but Gladys wanted me—I’m sure I can’t see why.”
“I should have thought,” said Marjory, “she’d like a more wide awake roommate so she could talk all night. Gladys does love to talk.”
“Not at night,” returned Victoria. “She lets me go to sleep at nine o’clock sharp and that’s the last I hear of her until morning.”
[CHAPTER IX—STRANGE DISAPPEARANCES]
The very next day after that Maude Wilder’s weekly allowance of thirty cents was missing from the purse that she had carelessly left on her table and Ruth Dennis’s gold beads were nowhere to be found.