"At a spread, oh, weeks and weeks ago."
"But where?" insisted Molly. "I have a real curiosity to know. Was it a Southern spread?"
"Far from it," said Madeleine. "Yankee as Yankee. One of the girls in Brentley House gave the spread."
"But she didn't provide the snakey-noodles," put in Judith. "What's that girl's name who talks through her nose?"
"Oh!"
"Coming to think of it, I believe she said they had been sent to her from an aunt in the South," went on Madeleine. "So you see, Molly, nobody has been poaching on your preserves."
Molly only smiled rather vaguely. She would have liked to ask a dozen more questions, but kept silent and presently, after shaking hands with the two inseparable friends, she went up to the library to think. Somehow Molly was not surprised. Nothing that Adele Windsor could do surprised her. The surprising part was how she avoided being found out. It was just like her to have planned the theft of the Senior Ramble lunch. There was something really diabolical in her notions of amusement. And now, what was to be done?
Should she tell the other girls after the holidays, or should she wait? It was all weeks off and Molly decided to let the secret rest in her own mind safely. Even if she told, it would be hard to prove the accusation at this late day, but perhaps—and here Molly's thoughts broke off.
"I detest all this meanness and trickery," she thought. "I don't blame Miss Walker for wanting to clean it out of the school. Anyway," she added, smiling, "if that girl bothers Judy any more, I intend to pronounce the mystic name of snakey-noodles over her head like a curse and see what happens."