This was on a Thursday. The following evening, "The Staff" was assembled in Milla's room. They had begun on the same subject, but by degrees had wandered back to Rendalen, who was still of more unfailing interest than the other. Tinka was imitating Rendalen's handwriting on a large sheet of paper. The others watched her efforts with attention, his large handwriting was just the opposite to his careful toilette; it was all run together without any division, each letter and each word absolutely joined on to the others. Tinka's caricatured attempts were like so many embroidery patterns. She wrote: "I can bear it no longer; meet me in the market-place at nine o'clock." She wrote it as a commentary on what they had been talking about--namely, how delightful it would be to receive such a letter. She wrote this closely across a whole sheet of letter-paper. She decorated one sheet after another in this fashion. Who was it who first proposed what now followed? They never could agree upon this afterwards. _One_ thing is certain, that Milla alone raised any objection, but it was so feebly and laughingly made, that it might well be taken for the opposite of what it purported to be. Each one of them took charge of a note on Saturday morning; one was put into Karen Lote's cloak, one into the pocket of the drawing mistress's long faded blue wrap, the third and fourth were slipped down, one into Miss Hall's mantle, and the other into that of one of the teachers of languages. The letters were not signed, the envelopes open and bearing no address; the request was written in so extravagant a style that the whole might pass for a joke, but that was just where the temptation lay. For, on the other side, it could not be denied that the hasty writing could very easily be mistaken for Rendalen's style when he was worried and in a hurry to finish. At nine o'clock on Saturday evening the last of the worthy townsfolk came home from their romantic evening walks on both sides of the town, looking so peaceful and inoffensive that not even a cat could have suspected treachery. Most of them went soberly across the market-place into the town. At this time, too, the boarders who had been out in search of amusement in the town were returning disappointed up the avenue. It had been calculated that if the Staff could join one of these parties, they would be free from suspicion while they watched their snares. Of course they were all four there; they met several ill-humoured friends from among the boarders a little way down, and joined company with them.