"I'll stand watch for a while," she said, adding as the girls started to protest: "It's hot in here and it's cool in the hall, and I need cooling off. Will somebody hand me a sandwich once in a while?"
"I'll say we will," they cried, and immediately began plying her with so many sandwiches and pickles and biscuits that she laughingly protested.
"And don't make too much noise," she said, as she started for the door. "You know Miss Ada may be a little suspicious that there's something up and come snooping around again."
"Well, you know the signal," Billie whispered after her. "Scratch twice on the door."
Caroline nodded, glanced at Rose, and went out to her post, sandwiches, pickles, biscuits and all.
The rest of that evening was not very pleasant for either Caroline or Rose. Caroline was wondering whether she ought to tell Billie and the other girls that she had found Rose sneaking, yes, actually sneaking, into the room across the hall when she should have been at her post.
"Of course, I don't know that she was going to do anything wrong," she kept telling herself, yet in her heart she knew that Rose had been up to some mischief. "But it isn't fair to Billie not to say anything," she worried. "I know Rose, and she's sure to try to get even some time, and Billie ought to be told to look out." And all the time she was thinking, her ears were strained for the slightest noise below stairs.
As for Rose, she would have pleaded a headache, for by that time she really had one, and gone to bed, if she had not been afraid of being laughed at by the girls.
And so she stayed on and on, trying to act as if nothing were the matter, laughing and joking with the other girls, eating sandwiches and cake till she was sick of the very sight of them, while all the time she was wondering, wondering, what Caroline was going to do.
"She can't really tell anything," she worried, while her head ached harder and harder. "I didn't really do anything."