“Sh!” commanded Susanna sternly. “If you say you’ve never heard of a thing like the Fourth Dimension, why, here at Harding that means social ostracism. To use simpler language suitable for very verdant little girls like you, not to have heard of the Fourth Dimension is a mark of complete and utter greenness, perfect and unbearable freshness, and even worse. If you haven’t heard of it, all right, but don’t say so, unless you want to be finally and forever dropped like—like a hot potato,”—Susanna glanced smilingly at the Curtain of Variety,—“by the best Harding circles. If you haven’t heard of it, why, bluff. Now don’t tell me you never heard of bluffing.”
“Well,” began Montana Marie, still smiling composedly, “you see I never heard of a lot of things that you do here, because I was mostly educated in a convent, I suppose. President Wallace understands that. That’s why he let me in when——”
Marie was too much absorbed in her speech, and her audience were too busy laughing at her confidential disclosures, to notice a slight commotion near the door. A second later the room was full of masked figures in black dominos. Two especially stalwart ones guarded the door. The rest drew a cordon around the amazed initiators and producing pieces of stout rope—procured, according to Straight’s directions, from the night watchman, who was under the impression that it was wanted by the Belden House matron for strange purposes of her own—they silently bound their prisoners, who were too astonished even to struggle, and started them in procession out the door and up the hall.
Suddenly a black domino cried, “Stop—I mean—halt, prisoners! We’ve forgotten something.”
For Montana Marie O’Toole still stood as she had been commanded to do to make her speech, on the quivering middle of the spring-board in the closet, viewing the performances of the black dominos with mingled surprise and amusement, manifested, as usual with her, by a smile, rather faint now, but still somehow infectious.
“We’ve forgotten the principal feature,” the voice went on. “Montana Marie O’Toole, get down. You’re no longer a persecuted little freshman. You’ve been nobly rescued by your junior protectors. Now come and see justice done on these base tormentors of youth and beauty.”
“All right,” agreed Marie calmly, scrambling down from her uncertain perch and losing off a slipper again in the process.
Susanna picked it up and handed it to her meekly.
“You’re a champion bluffer, if you don’t know what it means,” Fluffy told her admiringly. “I suppose you knew all the time that they were coming, and that was why you just giggled at everything and let us do our worst.”
Montana Marie O’Toole smiled vaguely back at Fluffy. “Oh, no, I didn’t know——” she began.