The low mountain house presently echoed with the girls' laughter, for indulging in their usual propensity to prolong recreation, a dressing-up contest was crowded in the hour of undressing. Billie Burks and boudoir caps, under long capes and wild draperies, furnished equipment adequate and ridiculous, so that even Jennie, who was dragged from her mending out to the second hall to serve as audience, found herself laughing foolishly at the girl scouts' antics.
Cleo impersonated "Walla-Hoola," with a string of twenty neckties (borrowed from Uncle Guy's room) dangling around her waist, over a combination of pink crêpe and bluebird pajamas. At the back of her neck, in savage glee, was propped the piano feather duster, the same being somewhat supported by another necktie of Kelly green hue, that banded her classic brow.
Madaline "tried on" Circe, all swathed up in a billowy white mosquito netting, that might never again be used as a bed canopy. She found her "rock" on a third floor landing, and clung frantically to the stairs post, while the wild sea of perfectly good oak steps dashed savagely at her uncovered toes. She also pink-pinked Cleo's ukelele, according to Circean traditions.
Grace rolled around the floor in the ocean waves—the lost soul who was to be saved by someone, anyone would do, so far as Grace was concerned. All she had to worry about apparently was the roll. Had she been a little older, and just a little more rotund, one might have suspected her indulging in a treatment; but it required, finally, the combined strength of Cleo and Jennie to extricate the "lost soul" from the meshes into which that roll and a couple of fine silkoline quilts had engulfed her.
"Mrs. Dunbar wouldn't like to have the quilts soiled," interposed Jennie wisely, "and now, girls, dear, do run along to bed. You've had a fine time, and I enjoyed the show first rate."
"Thank you, Jennie!" panted Grace, crawling out of her cocoon like a human caterpillar. "We had a lovely time also. And, Jennie, will you please be sure to leave your door open? Michael may be a very sound sleeper, and you know we all have to be on guard to-night."
"Indeed, Grace, not a step could come up that gravel path, or through the grass itself, but I would hear it"—Jennie was proud of her nocturnally acute sense of sound, or suspicion of mere noises—"and you may sleep sound as Michael himself, for nothing will come near this lodge unbeknownst to Jennie Marlow."
"That's a good Jennie," Cleo patted the trusted servant, "and if I hear even the tiniest bit of a noise, like a chipmunk, or a tree toad, you can expect me to come pouncing into your nice big feather bed."
"And leave us!" protested Madaline, who was no longer the entrancing
Circe.
"There'll be room for all of you, crosswise, like our old buckboard," Jennie assured them once more, and this time the "good-night" was allowed to take effect.