“Hea-vens! W-what is it-t?”
Wildly she sat up–a second time–to see the dawn poking at her with a pink finger and the lake shimmering without, a great pearl found by the morning in an iridescent oyster-shell of mist.
And, within, a bumping, buffeting something, soft as moss, dun-gray as terror–blundering into every sleeper’s face, as if testing its warmth, bowling its way along the line of cots.
“Cluck! Cluck! Flutter! Flutter! Awake! Awake! I’m lost! I’m lost!” it said.
“What is it? What is it?”
Never was such an exciting reveille as girl by girl bounded up–elastic–fingering a brushed, a tickled cheek.
The answer was a screech that made the morning blush, as if a ghost had invaded the Tom Tiddler’s ground of open day light.
Una shrieked in echo.
Morale was undermined. Cots were vacated. Maiden jostled maiden, all colliding upon a gaping question that fanned sensation sky-high–until the bungalow fairly rocked upon a hullabaloo.