By the time the fudge had been cleaned off from everything within a radius of five feet, for a more complete splash had never been made by any descending mass, the “lights out” bells were ringing in all the corridors. Miss Woodhull had only to press a series of buttons arranged in the hall just outside her study door to produce the effect of the needle-prick in the fairy tale. Every inmate immediately dropped asleep. Every? Well, exceptions prove a rule, it is said.
The following morning Beverly told Petty the circumstances of picking up the note and of its subsequent disappearance.
Petty was in despair and scolded and wept alternately, accusing Beverly of having deliberately confiscated it, and hinting pretty broadly that she had also read it.
The moment this accusation left her lips she regretted it because she knew it to be utterly unfounded and the blaze which sprung into Beverly’s eyes warned the little shallow pate that she had ventured a bit too far. She tried to retract by saying she was “nervous and excited and perfectly miserable at the loss of the letter. It was the first of Reggie’s letters she had ever lost, and he had written every single day for a whole year.”
“Three-hundred and sixty-five letters, and every one mushy?” cried Beverly, incredulously. “I should think it would be worse than eating a pound of nougat every day.”
Petty alternately moped and searched all Saturday, but, of course to no purpose. When Monday morning came she was in despair, and went to her first recitation in a most emotional frame of mind.
It happened to be French, and Monsieur Sautelle had been the French instructor but four months. Moreover, he had not yet been in America a year and American girls, and things American, were not only new but a constant source of marvel to him. He lived in a world of hitherto unknown sensations and this morning was destined to experience an entirely new one.
The period was nearly over before it came Petty’s turn to recite and Petty, as the result of having spent all her study period in a vain search for the lost letter, was totally unprepared.
“Madamoiselle Gaylor, you will be so good as to come the conjugation of the verb love, indicative mood, if you please.”
Unfortunate choice!