The boys worked hard to catch them again and the girls sat above and cheered their efforts, and in the middle of it in came Katherine and her companion, swathed in green veils. There was such an uproar in the barn that Cora never noticed that Katherine locked the door and put the key in her pocket. Cora gave a great start at the sight of the mice, which was not all from fright, and the girls could not help enjoying the situation. What must be her thoughts by this time? But Cora, obeying the natural impulse of women at the sight of mice, fled up the ladder with Katherine. If she thought it odd that the barn was full of girls and boys when she had gained the impression that it was empty and dark, she made no sign, but stood still with her veil over her face. With all those horrible creatures running around the floor downstairs she made no move to escape.
“Won’t you take off your things?” asked Katherine, beginning gently to break the news to Cora that she was to stay for the evening. Without demur Cora unfastened her coat and slid it off and then took off her hat and veil. The girls stood as if turned to stone. The person who stood before them was not Cora Burton. It was Miss Snively. It was Miss Snively!
She looked around her with a sneering smile and a snapping light in her eyes. “You may think it was a master stroke on your part to lure me here and lock me in so I could not join the conspirators and thus find out who they were,” she said with biting emphasis. “But you shall pay dearly for this, my young friends. I know who you all are—you needn’t try to hide behinds the others, Gladys Evans—and the information I shall be able to give Mr. Jackson tonight is what he has been trying to find out for a long time. Katherine Adams, you are the ringleader of this affair, as we might have expected. I know all about the plan to put the mice into the dance hall, and while the boys downstairs who are getting them ready are not the ones I should have expected to be doing it, it is just like you to get strange boys to do it for you, hoping to get away unsuspected. But it didn’t work, I am happy to say. You are very clever, Miss Adams, but not clever enough. I overheard you asking Cora Burton to meet you on the corner this evening. I took the liberty of being there first. I thought I had deceived you perfectly, not knowing that you were bringing me right into the mouse’s nest, so to speak.”
She paused for breath and looked around her with an expression of relish at the consternation visible on the faces before her. For Katherine was staring at her with startled, unbelieving eyes; Gladys was clutching her mother’s arm in a frightened manner; Hinpoha had sunk weakly down on the bearskin bed, and Sahwah stood with her mouth open and the perspiration running down her face in black streaks, and the others were dumb with astonishment. The boys, not knowing just what was going on, but guessing that something was the matter, stood by the ladder opening, silently taking in the scene. The girls looked helplessly into each other’s eyes. Somebody must speak and explain. They all looked at Katherine.
“But we aren’t mixed up in the House Party at all, Miss Snively,” she said earnestly. “We heard about it, and I found out that Cora Burton was going to be in it and I tried to make her stay home and she refused, so we girls decided we would take action to take her out of it by luring her up here and keeping her until the thing was over. That’s why I asked Cora to meet me on the corner, and I really thought you were Cora all the while. You imitated her squeaky voice to perfection.”
As Katherine was telling her perfectly truthful story she had a dreadful feeling that it didn’t sound plausible at all. Under Miss Snively’s cold eye nothing seemed real.
“Likely story!” said Miss Snively sneeringly. “And how does it happen that if you wanted to bring Cora out of temptation you should take her to the place where the mice were being boxed up ready to be taken to the party?” All the girls looked so disconcerted. Those dreadful mice did complicate matters so! They would have given anything if Nyoda had been there then.
The Captain was beginning to take in the situation. He came forward frankly. “It’s our fault about the mice,” he said, looking Miss Snively straight in the eye. “We found them in a field near here all boxed up and thought it would be a good joke on the girls to bring them over here and let them out. We don’t know anything about your squabbles at Washington High, except what little the girls here have told us; we’re all from Carnegie Mechanic. And we know the girls didn’t have a hand in it, because they were giving a show here to-night.”
His story was backed up by all the other boys, and then Mrs. Evans got in a word and declared that Katherine was telling the whole truth about Cora, and Miss Snively was forced, however ungraciously, to admit that she had been mistaken in her suspicions.
“If she’d been a man I’d have made her eat her words,” declared Slim wrathfully, after Miss Snively had departed from the scene.