es and pickles and biscuits that she laughingly protested.

"And don't make too much noise," she said, as she started for the door.
"You know Miss Ada may be a little suspicious that there's something up
and come snooping around again."

"Well, you know the signal," Billie whispered after her. "Scratch twice
on the door."

Caroline nodded, glanced at Rose, and went out to her post, sandwiches,
pickles, biscuits and all.

The rest of that evening was not very pleasant for either Caroline or
Rose. Caroline was wondering whether she ought to tell Billie and the
other girls that she had found Rose sneaking, yes, actually sneaking,
into the room across the hall when she should have been at her post.

"Of course, I don't know that she was going to do anything wrong," she
kept telling herself, yet in her heart she knew that Rose had been up to
some mischief. "But it isn't fair to Billie not to say anything," she
worried. "I know Rose, and she's sure to try to get even some time, and
Billie ought to be told to look out." And all the time she was thinking,
her ears were strained for the slightest noise below stairs.

As for Rose, she would have pleaded a headache, for by that time she
really had one, and gone to bed, if she had not been afraid of being
laughed at by the girls.

And so she stayed on and on, trying to act as if nothing were the
matter, laughing and joking with the other girls, eating sandwiches and
cake till she was sick of the very sight of them, while all the time she
was wondering, wondering, what Caroline was going to do.

"She can't really tell anything," she worried, while her head ached
harder and harder. "I didn't really _do_ anything."

But all the time she knew that just leaving her post at the door when so
much depended upon the girls not being discovered was a terrible thing
and one that the girls would find it hard to forgive should they find
her out.

"If only Caroline doesn't say anything," she thought, adding spitefully:
"And now I suppose I've got to be nice to the old thing, whether I want
to or not."

Meanwhile, the rest of the girls were having a gay time. Never had a
forbidden feast gone off so beautifully before, and they were in
hilarious spirits.

As the hour hand of the little clock on Nellie's dresser crept near to
midnight the girls packed up the fragments of the feast, and, after they
had pushed the baskets out of sight under the beds, drew their chairs
together to form a