"Mercy, isn't this spooky?" Carita said, taking a better hold on Blue Bonnet's arm. "Oh, this isn't anything? Wait a minute." Mary Boyd drew the girls over to a door at one side of the gymnasium and flung it wide. "That's a part of the furnace room," she said. "You can go through here and follow another little dark hall--oh, much worse than this--and it takes you to the kitchen and pantries. We went down one night last year--" "One night?" Carita shuddered. "Yes, it was loads of fun. There were five or six of us. We ate enough apple sauce and fresh bread to kill us." At the piano in the gymnasium a girl was playing a two-step. "Let's sit here and talk," Blue Bonnet said to Carita, drawing her to a secluded corner. "I feel as if I had hardly seen you." Sue Hemphill passed, and, seeing Blue Bonnet, dropped into a seat beside her. "Well," she said, "how do you girls like it by this time?" "The school, you mean?" Blue Bonnet asked. "Yes." "It's been rather strenuous to-day. I'm beginning to look forward to bedtime. I'm tired." "It is tiresome--getting adjusted." "What do we do after this half hour? It's a regular merry-go-round, isn't it? A continuous performance." Sue laughed. "We study the next hour. Sometimes--twice a week--we have a short lecture on general culture. You'll be taught how to enter a room properly, and how to leave it--" "I know that already." "Of course, but it has to be impressed." "Then what?" "Then we go to our rooms. Sometimes we settle down, and sometimes we don't. It depends. Once in a while we have a feast. We'll invite you next time." Blue Bonnet looked interested. "Where do you have it?" "Oh, in our rooms sometimes--but it's risky. The sky parlor is the best place. That's up in the attic--under the eaves. It's fine! There's no teacher to bother. It's a little cold just now. They don't heat it, but you can put on your bath-robe and be comfy. We're waiting now for Wee Watts to get her clean clothes back from home. You see, she only lives an hour or two out of the city, and she sends her things home to be washed. When they come back, her mother always fills up the suitcase with cakes and cookies and jam--well, not jam, any more. The last jar she sent, broke, and spilled all over a new silk waist she was sending Wee for a party. It was quite tragic." "The loss of the jam--or the waist?" "Both. It was hard on Wee, losing the waist. You see, she's so stout she can't borrow much from the rest of us." Annabel came up at that moment and asked Sue to dance, so Carita and Blue Bonnet visited until the gong sounded. * * * * * On the way up to the study hall, Miss North stopped Blue Bonnet. "Will you come to my office a moment after study hour?" she said. "I want to go over your program with you. The room is just beyond the reception hall on the first floor." Blue Bonnet found Miss North waiting when she entered the room an hour later.