"Less noise, please," said a determined voice outside, "or I shall have to report 117 to the principal."
Dum lay on the floor convulsed with giggles. "Sh-h—." I warned. "Be careful, or we'll all have to write pages from the dictionary for two hours."
"You won't have to, surely, when Dum and I made all the racket," whispered Dee.
"The teacher said '117,' and that means me, too. Can you get back into bed? Is the foot untucked?"
"I believe I can if I don't start giggling again," and Dum began to squirm out of the covers.
"Let me help," said the penitent Dee, and Dum was soon back in her cot and silence reigned supreme. After a while I heard Dum whisper:
"Say, Dee, I did skip. Conscience bids me confess to thee."
"Well, Dum, I'll give it to you that you and your conscience are perfect gentlemen," said Dee admiringly.
"Thanks awfully," yawned Dum. "I know one thing, I'm a mighty sleepy gentleman;" and in a trice the quiet breathing from the disheveled bed told that Dum and her conscience were at rest.
There were constant surprises in store for one who shared a room with the Tucker twins. They certainly had the gift of infinite variety in the kind of scrapes they could get themselves into. They usually got out of scrapes as easily as they got into them by a certain frankness and directness that would disarm Miss Peyton herself. They didn't break rules, because they did things that nobody had ever thought of making rules about. The principal at Gresham was not so farseeing as the teacher in "Mary Had a Little Lamb," who seems to have made a rule about lambs in school: