"Quick work!" I gasped, falling on my bed. "Down to the station and back in forty minutes!"
But safety was not ours yet. We heard a door open down the corridor and light-slippered steps approaching 117.
"In bed with you, quick!" exclaimed Dum; and without the formality of night dresses, we jumped into bed, only taking the precaution to remove our hats. Diving under the covers with only our noses sticking out, we were to all appearances as lost to the world as the seven sleepers.
It was a teacher who had evidently heard a suspicious noise and had come out to investigate. She stopped a minute in front of our door and then gently turned the knob. "All quiet along the Potomac!" She stood a minute listening to Dum's "gently taken breath" and Dee's lifelike snore, and then quietly retired on tiptoe; and in a moment we heard her door close at the end of the corridor. If we got dressed like engine horses going to a fire, we got undressed like boys seeing who can get into the swimming hole first.
Dum kissed us both good-night, or rather good-morning, but said never a word about what her intentions had been nor the reasons for her flitting. We were asleep in a minute and the next morning I had to pinch myself to see if it had not been a dream. Our damp skirts and overshoes and each girl's hat under her bed was all that made me realize that we had been on that mad chase at midnight after the irrepressible Dum.
"Girls, you are both bricks!" exclaimed Dum, rubbing her eyes as the relentless rising bell tolled out. "Just think! If you had not come for me, I would have been in Richmond by this time and poor old Zebedee disgraced for life. There is nothing I can do to make it up to you——"
"Yes, there is," chorused Dee and me, "get to work again."
"I wasn't quite through what I was saying, but I am not going to impose the fine that you owe for interrupting, and I am going to pay my fine that amounts to a quarter now. I was awfully ashamed of not paying it last night, but you see I just did have enough money to get me to Richmond if I traveled on a day coach, so I had to let my debts of honor slide. I have been a bad, rude, unreasonable girl and I am just as sorry as I can be. I deserve to be expelled.
I don't know what has been the matter
with me but I believe I have been getting ready to go to the home for the criminally insane. I hated the school; I hated the teachers; I hated lessons and rules; I just wanted Zebedee. He was the only person I wanted and I wanted him so bad I was just going to have him." Dum got out one of the gentlemen's handkerchiefs that she and Dee used and wept copiously. "Do you reckon we'll be found out?"
"Not a bit of it," I reassured her. "The blessed snow that was in that black cloud hiding the moon last night has covered up all our rabbit tracks, and when we take our walk this afternoon I am going to slip out of line long enough to warn Captain Leahy not to tell on us. Now, Dum, you get back to bed and stay there all day. I am going to tell Miss Peyton you don't feel quite up to snuff, which is certainly so. You jump in and study all your back lessons that you have missed and catch up with your classes. It will take a day of diligent work to do it because you have loafed ever since we got back to school, and by to-morrow morning you will feel reconciled to life and take your place again."
"Well, that would be kind of pleasant, but bring me up enough breakfast, 'cause I am not too ill to eat; and before you go down, hand me those brownies I made last night," and Dum reduced the inoffensive little works of art to Limbo with one squeeze of her hand. "I was leaving one of them for each teacher. I wanted to make them into devils but thought maybe that would be a little too sassy. I don't feel a bit that way now. I may model some angels to-day if I can get time after I have mastered all my back work."