"Sh! sh! do hush, girls!" cried Miss Archer, waving her paper to enjoin silence, "This will have to be nicely copied in ink, and you'll all have to sign it again. And let me warn you," she added, soberly, "you'd better keep pretty mum about last night, or we will get a bigger pill than will be comfortable to swallow."
She seated herself at the table again and made a neat copy of her document, after which the signatures were carefully appended, then the meeting was dismissed, and the "captain" of the disorderly sophomores went directly to Prof. Seabrook's study.
It was very nearly supper time, and she had reasoned that he would issue an order, at the table, for the class to meet him in one of the recitation rooms, in the near future, to give the guilty ones an opportunity for confession; and her plan was to forestall this summons with the paper she had prepared.
When, in response to her knock, he bade her "come in," it must be confessed that she opened the door with fear and trembling; while something in her bearing and the tense lines of her face at once aroused a suspicion of the nature of her errand in the principal's mind.
"Prof. Seabrook, I have been commissioned to hand you this communication," she gravely said, as she laid, it on the table before him.
"Ah! by whom were you 'commissioned,' Miss Archer?" he inquired, his keen eyes searching her flushed face.
"By—by the parties whose names you will find signed to it."
"And what is the nature of the communication?"
"I—er—it will explain itself," replied the trembling emissary, blushing furiously and averting her eyes.
"Very well; I will give it my earliest attention," the professor returned, but eying the missive curiously.