"Why, that name, snakey-noodle. You see it's a kind of family name with us. Our old cook has been making them for years. I really thought she had originated it, but I suppose other colored people know it, too. Where did you have one?" "At a spread, oh, weeks and weeks ago." "But where?" insisted Molly. "I have a real curiosity to know. Was it a Southern spread?" "Far from it," said Madeleine. "Yankee as Yankee. One of the girls in Brentley House gave the spread." "But she didn't provide the snakey-noodles," put in Judith. "What's that girl's name who talks through her nose?" "Miss Windsor." "Oh!" "Coming to think of it, I believe she said they had been sent to her from an aunt in the South," went on Madeleine. "So you see, Molly, nobody has been poaching on your preserves." Molly only smiled rather vaguely. She would have liked to ask a dozen more questions, but kept silent and presently, after shaking hands with the two inseparable friends, she went up to the library to think. Somehow Molly was not surprised. Nothing that Adele Windsor could do surprised her. The surprising part was how she avoided being found out. It was just like her to have planned the theft of the Senior Ramble lunch. There was something really diabolical in her notions of amusement. And now, what was to be done? Should she tell the other girls after the holidays, or should she wait? It was all weeks off and Molly decided to let the secret rest in her own mind safely. Even if she told, it would be hard to prove the accusation at this late day, but perhaps--and here Molly's thoughts broke off. "I detest all this meanness and trickery," she thought. "I don't blame Miss Walker for wanting to clean it out of the school. Anyway," she added, smiling, "if that girl bothers Judy any more, I intend to pronounce the mystic name of snakey-noodles over her head like a curse and see what happens." That afternoon Molly packed a suitcase full of clothes and lugged it down to Mrs. O'Reilly's, where she had consented to spend Christmas with Judy instead of in her own pretty Quadrangle apartment. Secretly Molly would much rather have stayed in No. 5, where she could have rested and read poetry as much as she liked. But she was rarely known to consult her own comfort when her friends asked her to do them a favor, and, after all, if she were going to put Judy through a course of study, she had better be on the spot to see that the irresponsible young person stuck to her books. So the two girls established themselves in the pleasant fire-lit room overlooking the garden. Judy had brought down two framed photographs of her favorite pictures and a big brass jar by way of ornament, and on Christmas Eve the girls went out to buy holly and red swamp berries. They were walking along the crowded sidewalk arm in arm, recalling how last year they had done exactly the same thing, when they came unexpectedly face to face with Mr. James Lufton.