d the stiff-lipped Nancy, while Jennie began to sob.

"I notice that Jennie's roommate is not here. When she returns, Nancy,
you may go back to your own room. And I shall deal out the same sort of
punishment to Sally that I do to you, Nancy.

"And that is," pursued Madame Schakael, slowly, "that you will be denied
recreation, save that which is a part of the school curriculum, until
the Christmas recess."

Nancy said nothing. But she fully understood what it meant. No outdoor
runs alone, no skating, nothing save the exercises prescribed by the
physical instructor.

"You may wait for Sally's return. And you are both forbidden to speak of
this visit," the principal said, and withdrew from the room as softly as
she had entered it.

"Oh, dear me!" gasped Nancy, "she will catch them all in Number 30."

"And serve 'em right," said Jennie.

They waited, expecting to see Jennie's roommate coming back in a hurry.
But there was no disturbance. The clock at the foot of the main
staircases had long since struck eleven. Now it tolled midnight.

Soon there were creaking of doors, faint rustlings in the corridors,
giggling half-suppressed, and then the door of Number 40 opened again
softly.

"Oh, gee!" exclaimed Sally. "Is she _here_?"

"Yes, she is," replied Jenny, tartly. "What have you got to say against
it?"

"Oh, you needn't be so short, Jennie Bruce," said Sally.

She slipped out of her wrapper and into her bed. Nancy got up, kissed
Jennie warmly, and left the room silently. When she got back to Number
30 Cora was alone. All traces of the spread were hidden.

Cora said never a word; neither did Nancy. But she wondered much. Madame
Schakael, she believed, had not hunted out the mystery of _her_ being
with Jennie Bruce. Would she and Sally be the only ones punished for
this affair?

Morning came and with it the usual assembly in the hall for prayers
after breakfast. From the platform Madame Schakael read, without a word
of explanation, the names of every girl who had attended Cora's
spread--save Cora herself--and ordered that they be deprived of
recreation, as had Nancy, "for being out of their dormitories after
hours." The blow fell like a thunderclap upon the culprits.

When they filed out of the hall to go to first recitation not one of the
girls who had been at Number 30 the night before but scowled deadly
hatred at poor Nancy.

It would have been useless for Nancy to point out that she, too, had
received