st about to get into bed that night, and
Muriel, as dormitory monitress, was waiting to turn the lights out,
when there came a piercing scream from Cubicle Thirteen. The next
moment a slender night-gowned figure burst into the corridor, shaking
in every limb. A dozen heads were thrust out from behind curtains to
see what was the matter, and the head girl came hurrying down the
dormitory to investigate the cause of the disturbance.

"Why, Geraldine! What is the matter? Who has been frightening
Geraldine Wilmott like this?" demanded Muriel sternly, as she joined
the group of girls clustering round Geraldine.

"Nobody's been frightening her. She just screamed, and we came out to
see what was the matter," said Phyllis Tressider, with an air of
innocence and anxious solicitude. Had Muriel been watching her closely
she might have suspected that extreme innocence, but as it was she was
too much taken up with Geraldine to heed it.

"What is the matter, Geraldine?" she asked again, putting her hand
kindly on the trembling girl's shoulder. "What happened? What was it
frightened you so?"

"It was a m--m--mouse! It was in my bed. It jumped out at me when I
was getting in. It's in my cubicle now. Oh, catch it for me! Do
catch it!" the girl wailed. "I do _hate_ mice so!"

"A _mouse_?" Muriel's hand dropped from the girl's shoulder, and her
voice was expressive of the utmost scorn. "Fancy making all that fuss
about a _mouse_! Really, Geraldine, I should have thought you were too
old for such nonsense. Get into bed at once and don't let me hear any
more of this rubbish."

"Oh, I daren't? It may be there still," cried Geraldine, struggling to
control her terror but not succeeding very well. Mice were a real
bugbear to her, and had been ever since a foolish nursemaid had scared
her with them as a tiny mite, and the fear had grown worse instead of
better during the last three years. But, of course, the girls of
Wakehurst Priory could not be expected to know this, or to have
understood the terror even if they had--least of all Muriel Paget,
whose own nerves were of that sane and healthy order for which mice and
other fearsome creatures had no terrors at all. She stalked into
Geraldine's cubicle and turned down the bedclothes of the small bed.
But though she made a thorough search both in the bed and under all the
furniture, no trace of the mouse could be discovered. It had utterly
disappeared, and the head gir