"Whow! Ooo!" yawned Peggy, to whom late hours were a novelty and who felt as though she had dropped asleep only ten minutes before. "Why, Polly Howland, it's pitch dark, and midnight! I know it is," she protested. "How do you know there are stockings there, anyway?"
"I was shivering and when I reached over to get the puff cover my hand touched something bumpy. I've felt of it and I KNOW it's a stocking. I never thought of having one, for I thought all those things were way back in little girl days. But turn on the electric lights quick—they're on your side of the bed—and we'll see what's in them; the stockings, I mean."
Peggy turned the button and the lights flashed up.
"Goodness, isn't it freezing cold," she cried. "Let's put the puff cover around us," and rolled up in the big down coverlet the girls dove into their bumpy stockings, exclaiming or laughing over the contents, for evidently the boys had been in the secret, for out of Peggy's came a little bronze cow and calf labeled "C. and S."
"Now what in the world does C. and S. stand for, I wonder?" she said.
"Oh, Peggy, those are the initials for 'Clean and Sober,' the report the officer-of-the-deck makes when the enlisted men come aboard after being on liberty. If they are intoxicated and untidy they check them up D. and D.—which means Drunk and Dirty. You'll never hear the last of Betsy Brindle's caper."
"Well look and see what they've run you about, for you won't escape, I'll wager," laughed Peggy as merrily as though it were broad daylight instead of five A.M.
Polly dove into her stocking to fish out a tiny rocking horse with a doll riding astride it. The horse was to all intents and purposes on a mad gallop, for his rider's hair, DYED A VIVID RED, was streaming out behind, her collar was flying loose, her feet were out of the stirrups and one shoe was gone. The mad rider bore the legend:
"Lady Gilpin."
A dozen other nonsensical things followed, but down in the toe of each was a beautiful 19— class pin for each of the girls, with "Co-ed 19—" engraved on them and cards saying "with the compliments of the bunch."