“Only the fire drill! They’ve had an alarm, and she’s told to shut off draughts. Very good going! Not more than five or six seconds all told!”
“There isn’t really—”
“Oh, dear, no. No such luck! Poor fun having a fire brigade, and no chance to show its mettle. But we live in hope. You ought to join. I can imagine you making a magnificent captain.”
So here was another ambition. Darsie made a mental note to inquire into the workings of the fire brigade, and to offer her name as a recruit without delay.
Chapter Nineteen.
The Fancy Ball.
It was somewhat of a shock to the Fresher contingency to receive one morning the intimation of a Costume Ball, to be held in Clough Hall on the following night; but their protests met with scant sympathy from the elders. When Darsie plaintively declared that she hadn’t got a fancy dress, and would not have time to send home for it if she had, a third-year girl silenced her by a stern counter-question: “And where, pray, would be the fun if you had, and could? If at the cost of a postcard you could be fitted up as the Lady of the Lake in green draperies and water-lilies, it would no doubt be exceedingly becoming, but it would be no sport. No, young woman, you’ve got to contrive something out of nothing and an hour stolen from the night, and when you’ve done it you’ll be in the mood to appreciate other people’s contrivings into the bargain. Buck up! You’re one of the dressy sort. We’ll expect wonders from you.”
But when Darsie repaired to the seclusion of her study and set herself to the problem of evolving a fancy dress out of an ordinary college outfit, ideas were remarkably slow in coming. She looked questioningly at each piece of drapery in turns, wondered if she could be a ghost in curtains, a statue in sheets, an eastern houri in the cotton quilt, a Portia in the hearthrug, discarded each possibility in turn, and turned her attention to her own wardrobe.