Molly felt uncomfortable for some reason and Miss Green changed the subject.
"By the way," she said, "I heard the other day what had become of some of the luncheon you seniors lost the day the Major took you in and fed you. The thieves probably took all they could carry with them and dumped the rest in a field between Exmoor and Round Head. Like as not they picnicked on top of Round Head. Some of the Exmoor boys found a pile of desiccated sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs and cake one day when they were out walking, and Dodo and Andy brought the story to me."
"Think of the waste of it," exclaimed Molly. "They might at least have given what they didn't want to the poor."
"There aren't any poor people around there, child."
"Well, to Mrs. Murphy, then. She's poor and we wouldn't have minded having worked so hard to feed Mrs. Murphy."
"I wonder who did it," put in the Professor.
"None of the Exmoor boys, I'm sure," said his sister, who had a very soft spot for the boys of her younger brother's college.
"Some day it will come out," announced Molly. "Things always do sooner or later and we needn't bother about playing detective. It's a horrible rôle to act, anyway."
"I remember when I was a boy at college," began the Professor, "some fellows played rather a nasty practical joke on some of us and they were caught by a trick of fate. On the night of the senior class elections, which always take place just before a banquet at the Exmoor Inn, some of the students broke into the inn kitchen, masked, overpowered the cook and the waiter and stole all the food they conveniently could carry away. One of the saucepans contained lobster, and the next morning there were six very ill young men at the infirmary with ptomaine poisoning and it was not hard to guess who were the thieves of our supper."
"Were they punished?" asked Molly.