"A mouse?" Muriel's hand dropped from the girl's shoulder, and her voice was expressive of the utmost scorn. "Fancy making all that fuss about a mouse! Really, Geraldine, I should have thought you were too old for such nonsense. Get into bed at once and don't let me hear any more of this rubbish."
"Oh, I daren't? It may be there still," cried Geraldine, struggling to control her terror but not succeeding very well. Mice were a real bugbear to her, and had been ever since a foolish nursemaid had scared her with them as a tiny mite, and the fear had grown worse instead of better during the last three years. But, of course, the girls of Wakehurst Priory could not be expected to know this, or to have understood the terror even if they had—least of all Muriel Paget, whose own nerves were of that sane and healthy order for which mice and other fearsome creatures had no terrors at all. She stalked into Geraldine's cubicle and turned down the bedclothes of the small bed. But though she made a thorough search both in the bed and under all the furniture, no trace of the mouse could be discovered. It had utterly disappeared, and the head girl was inclined to believe that the occupant of Number Thirteen had imagined the whole incident.
"There's nothing there. Get back into bed at once," she commanded, having looked in every possible and impossible place for the cause of Geraldine's alarm. "Even if it was a mouse, it couldn't hurt you. It would probably be much more frightened of you than you are of it."
"There really is nothing there, Geraldine," said Monica kindly. "Come along and get back into bed and let me tuck you up. I'm next door to you, you know, and I'll come along in a minute if you're frightened in the night."
Geraldine allowed herself to be taken back to bed and tucked in by the elder girl. Now that her first fright was over, and the unreasoning terror that always possessed her at the sight of a mouse had passed away somewhat, she was very much ashamed of her panic, and dreaded the teasing it would probably bring upon her from the rest of the school. A remark which Dorothy Pemberton made, as she scurried back to her own distant cubicle at Muriel's bidding, did not tend to ease poor Geraldine's mind.
"I think her name rather suits her, don't you?" she asked of the dormitory in general. "She's nothing but a German Gerry after all!"
And although Muriel Paget commanded her sharply to shut up and get into bed, yet the titter of appreciation that went round the dormitory warned Geraldine only too surely that Dorothy had found a nickname for her that would stick.