Before her sentence was finished, Mamie had flown out of the room, and wild with delight over the “fun” before her, she rapidly made her choice among the girls, not giving them time for consideration, but hurrying them with all speed into their best clothes. They crept out, one by one, through different ways. Myra Peters jumped from a window when she heard Miss Palmer’s door open, sure that otherwise she would be found.
That her dress caught, that for a moment she hung between the moonlit sky and a deep snow-bank, seemed to her of no consequence, so she could escape. 114 She left a bit of her best dress hanging on a hook, but this she did not know until afterwards.
The girls met in the street, near the large front gate, where a tall Norway spruce hid them entirely from the front windows of the academy. Certainly they were not a merry group when they came together. All they had to say to each other was in hushed and frightened tones the peril of their escape.
When they reached the corner of Bond and Centre Streets there stood the sleigh! How tempting it looked with its warm fur robes, its four gayly caparisoned horses, its driver, slapping his hands together to keep them warm, and the boys coming to meet them with such a merry welcome!
Did they forget there was such a thing as consequences? Who can tell?
We would not if we could describe any further the occurrences of the evening. It was past twelve when the six girls, tired, frightened, locked out of the house by every door, found themselves—sleigh, horses, bells, boys, all gone—shivering under the back balcony, as forlorn a set of beings as the calm moon shone upon.
It was not for some time that Myra Peters remembered the window out of which she had clambered. If that were unlocked here might be an entrance that at this time of night would be wholly unobserved.
“But if it is?” asked the most frightened of the girls. 115
“Julia Abbey, you are always croaking,” scolded shaking Mamie Smythe. “The next time I ask you to go anywhere, I shall know it!”
“I—I hope you never will; it—it don’t pay,” sobbed Julia.