And at first it really seemed as if she would. Imagine a big gymnasium with jack-o’-lanterns on the rafters and a blazing wood-fire in the wide fireplace, and five hundred figures in white circling and mingling among the shadows, and at least a thousand sticks of candy, and three big dish-pans full of peanuts, and gallons and gallons of red lemonade. When her escort proposed that they should go up-stairs to look in upon the seniors and sophomores who were having a country dance, Robbie Belle moistened her lips and said, “If you please, don’t wait for me. I enjoy it so much here.” Then at the junior’s formal, “Oh, certainly, Miss Sanders!” she remembered that often people did not understand her unless she used a bothersome number of words. So she added hastily, “I mean that you must go with your own friends and leave me here, because I am watching some girls I know, and I want to speak to them. Please don’t trouble any more about me, thank you.”
“I do know them,” she assured herself as her escort disappeared, “and I do want to speak to them even if they don’t know me. I think”—she hesitated and turned quite pale at the prospect of such daring, “I think I shall go and play with them. They will suppose I am one of them. Nobody will know.”
At this point the file of impudent ghosts, headed by Berta, who looked unusually tall and still angular under her flowing sheet, paraded past Robbie Belle’s corner, their elbows flapping like wings. With a gasp for courage she took one step forward and found herself prancing along at the end of the line.
It was such fun! Robbie Belle had shot up to an annoying stature so comparatively early in life that her romping days seemed to have broken short off in the middle. She had never had enough of tag and hide-and-seek and coasting. She hated long skirts. Indeed that was one reason why she longed to join the enviable circle of freshmen around Berta: they wore golf skirts all day long, except when hockey called for the gymnasium costume or bicycling demanded its appropriate array. The reason why she liked Miss Abbott best of course was because her name was Roberta, too.
On this Hallowe’en, in joyous faith in her disguise, she forgot her height and breadth and the dignity imposed thereby. And anyhow Berta Abbott was just as tall, if not of such stately proportions. So Robbie Belle with exulting zest in the frolic raced up-stairs and down with the mischievous band of freshmen. They skipped saucily around members of the faculty, chased appreciative juniors, frightened the smallest forms into scuttling flight, and gave their great performance of “There was an old woman all skin and bones,” in the middle of the upper hall, where the seniors were entertaining the sophomores.
It was fun to howl. It was so long since Robbie Belle had grown up that she had almost forgotten the joy of using her lungs to their full capacity. With her spirits dancing in the afterglow of such vocal exercise, she marched after the others down to the hall below. There in the vestibule Berta halted her followers for final instructions.
“Now, girls, fall into line according to height. We are going to astonish——Why!” She fixed two amazed dark eyes upon the tallest, “who are you?”
Robbie Belle heard; she felt her heart shriveling within her; her shoulders seemed to shrink together; her head drooped. Then turning away slowly she moved toward the gymnasium apartment, a loose corner of her robe trailing at her abashed heels. But she did not escape swiftly enough to avoid catching the sound of hisses.
“Ha! an interloper!”
“Hist! ye false intruder!”