Just now Eleanor was keen upon getting the two plays given just before the Christmas vacation well started before the busy time at the end of term: it was the custom for the Old Girls to entertain the New Girls at a play and for the New Girls to return the compliment.
So the absorbing topic of Queen's new hockey coach being exhausted for the time being, "Got any good stuff for the play in your cubicles, Cathy?" asked Eleanor; "looks to me as if they are a nice lively little bunch. What a little witch Sally May is, and what lovely eyes Judy has! I'm glad she and Nancy are such pals—they make a good team."
"They're darlings, all of 'em," said Catherine enthusiastically; "but 'not too good for human nature's daily food.'" And she unfolded the plan for the midnight supper.
"Well, of course," said Eleanor, laughing reminiscently, "you couldn't expect them to go home for the holidays without a story of some such adventure as that. Remember the time we went down to the gym and Pat fell over the dumb-bell rack."
"And it was such a mean supper to get punished for," added Catherine, grinning; "only cold baked beans and apples. The trouble is that Miss Marlowe is death on suppers since Christine Dawson caught pneumonia last year when they climbed out on to the sun-parlour roof, and of course now that I know—"
"Oh, of course we'll have to do something. But what?"
Various plans were discussed, but nothing satisfied their desire for poetic justice until suddenly Catherine exclaimed: "I've got it! Let them have their supper, and then we'll make them wish they hadn't—let's lock the door of the common room (that's where they mean to go) and give them a good long time in which to repent of their sins. I've got the key—Miss Marlowe loaned it me for the dress rehearsals."
"Good," said Eleanor. "I'll see that the windows are kept shut during the evening so that they won't catch cold, and I'll oil the lock at tea-time."
And in spite of the solemnity befitting prefects, their eyes danced as they pictured the dismay of the young sinners when they discovered themselves caught; for prefects, notwithstanding their dignity and general "high and mightiness," are not by any means above a bit of a lark themselves.