“Why?” asked Margot. “That night! Saturday week! Is there really going to be one then!”
“Oh, rather!” returned Josy. “It’s partly to make up for the puddings that the team have missed, nurse says; and, besides, it’s an awfully ripping finish to the day, if we win; and it’s rather decent and comforting if we don’t. So Miss Slater always lets us have it; all but the little ones—they don’t have one now.”
“How about the dormitory lists this time, Helen?” inquired the house-mistress.
“Well, there’s more than a week left, Miss Read; if I collect them and give them in to you by the Wednesday before, will that do?”
“What!” Sybil’s shrill voice was heard from the other table; “a feast! How perfectly lovely!”
“You’ll have to wait till you’re a bit older, Sybil,” replied nurse briskly. “No feasts in the babies’ dormitory, you know. Next year, perhaps.”
“I’m not a baby,” began Sybil, as crossly as she dared; “and I don’t see why other girls should be greedier than me just because they’re bigger.” Her protests died away unheeded into a rather sulky mumble.
Gretta turned to Josy, feeling sorry for her little sister, who had been endowed with such a very sweet tooth. “Why don’t the little ones have a feast, too?”
“Well, they did until one year when three of them out of that dormer were all sick the next day. But they always have something else just as ripping before the end of term. Nurse arranges it, so it’s sure to be decent. None of them is in the team, of course.”
The combined excitement of the prospective match and the dormitory feast provided plenty of material for conversation during the ensuing three weeks. As they undressed in their cubicles the girls of Dormitory 3 found much to say on these topics; and one and all combined in pitying Stella, who was to be absent from the second of the entertainments.