“I knew you’d see it some day, Gus,” broke in Calista Wilmot. “I’m as glad as you that we have all amounted to a little as freshies. It is nice to be noticed, rather than have to be always in the background.”
It was in this happy frame of mind that Gussie and her companions climbed the stairs to their room.
The mild hazing to which Augusta and Flossie had been subjected earlier in the year had prompted them to lock the door of their room while at meals or when both were out in the evening. The persecution having stopped as suddenly as it had begun, gradually they grew careless. On this particular evening they had not locked their door.
Gussie, being a foot or two in advance of Flossie, half opened the door and felt for the button to throw on the electric light. The nearest hall light was several doors from her room. Hence the interior of the room was in comparative darkness. She uttered an impatient exclamation as her exploring fingers failed to find the button. She took a quick step into the room only to discover that something had suddenly happened to her feet. The soles of her satin evening slippers had acquired something which crackled and rustled and clung. She cried out and lurched clumsily forward in her amazement, only to trip against something else which threw her headlong against the center table.
“For goodness’ sake, Flossie, keep out!” she loudly warned. “Go for some matches. We’ve been hazed again. Oh, why didn’t I lock the door?”
Her warning came too late. Florence had followed her, only to find her own feet immeshed in the same sticky trap.
“It’s fly paper, that’s what it is,” she sputtered. Floundering into the hall, she now called out in wrathful discovery. “Wait until I free my slippers of it and I’ll go for some matches.”
Out in the hall Flossie ripped her slippers clear of the sticky paper with a forceful hand. Rolling it into a loose ball she started with it for the stairs, her indignation running high. Meanwhile Gussie had flapped to the open door and was engaged in ridding her own slippers of the incumbrance.
Straight to Miss Remson’s own room sped Flossie, determined this time to spare no one. She and Gussie had heretofore silently endured—but no more of it. A few excited sentences and the manager, who had also just returned from the concert, was hurriedly accompanying her upstairs, a lighted candle and a box of matches in hand.
Examination by candle rays of the spot where the electric push button should be showed that it was still there, but temporarily eclipsed. It had been neatly covered over by a smooth piece of cardboard tacked securely to the wall. In the dark the feel of the cardboard would be similar to that of the wall paper. The cardboard ripped off and the light thrown on, the havoc, already partially revealed by candle light, showed only too baldly. What Gussie had fallen over was one of three wooden soap boxes. These had been placed in a row and covered with a blue serge coat belonging to her. On the top of the middle one was a quart can of white paint. Stumbling, she had tipped it over and it now plentifully bedecked her coat, the rug, the skirt of her turquoise blue evening frock and her blue satin slippers.