As it was, they rose resentfully, finding it hard to get their eyes open, looking for their clothes half-heartedly, grumbling at everything and everybody.
It was Billie, who had slept less than any of them, who whispered a warning to them. She had seen Eliza and Amanda eyeing them suspiciously. It would never do, after having managed the party so successfully, to let the cat out of the bag after the affair was over.
The argument appealed to the girls, and they woke up with a suddenness almost more suspicious than their former sleepiness had been.
It was not till noon that Billie found a chance to tell the girls what she had seen from the dormitory window after the rest of them were in bed.
By that time the last evidence of last night's party had been cleared away, and the girls were beginning to feel secure again.
One by one they had run back to the dormitories between classes, made the remnants of the feast into small paper bundles, and had smuggled them down to the cellar and deposited them in the big box where all the papers and other rubbish was kept until the man of all work about Three Towers carted it off into the woods to be burnt up.
So now, in hilarious spirits, they answered Billie's call and flung themselves in various characteristic and joyful attitudes upon her bed.
"Speak, woman, speak," Laura commanded her, stealing a chocolate from Vi's sweater pocket. "What have you got to say for yourself?"
"Yes, what do you mean by getting up such a disgraceful affair as happened here last night?" added Nellie Bane in such an exact imitation of Miss Ada's manner that the girls giggled delightedly.
"Look out," cried Connie Danvers, in a whisper, for Amanda and the "Shadow" had just come into the room. "If you are not careful our wicked plot will yet be discovered."