"Plans for sport in ragtime wanted! All offers carefully considered. Now, then, bring on your suggestions." Everybody stared hopefully at everybody else, but no one rose to the occasion. "Going--going--going--a first-rate opportunity for mirth-provoking----" "Could we get them into the passage and one of us hide behind the curtain of the barred room and act ghost?" proposed Romola desperately. Her suggestion, however, was received with utter scorn. "Can't you think of anything more original than that?" "We're fed up with that ghost trick. Nobody even calls it funny now." "Besides, Miss Birks said she'd punish anyone who did it again. She was awfully angry last time." Duly squashed, Romola subsided, and the silence which followed resembled that of a Quakers' meeting. "I've got it!" shouted Betty at last, clapping her hands ecstatically. "The very thing! Oh, the supremest joke!" "Good biz! But please condescend to explain," commented Evie. "Oh, we'll try thing-um-bob--what d'you call it? Mesmerism--that's the word I want. With dinner plates, you know." Apparently nobody knew, for all looked interested and intelligent, but unenlightened. "Do you mean to say you've never heard of it? Oh, goody! What luck!" "Look here," interposed Annie, "you're not going to rag us as well. It's to be for the benefit of VA if there's any sell about it." "All right! They'll really be enough, and you shall act audience. Only with fourteen of you it would have been so----" "Betty Scott, give us your word this instant that you won't play tricks on your own Form." "I won't--I won't--honest, I won't!" "And tell us what you're going to do." "No, that would spoil it all. You must wait and see. Barbara, go to the kitchen door and cajole Cook into lending us seven dinner plates. Say you'll pledge your honour not to break them. And purloin a candle from the lamp cupboard. Be as quick as you can! Time wanes." Barbara executed her errand with speed and success. She soon returned with the plates and set them down on the table. Betty lighted the candle, laid one plate aside, then held each of the others in turn over the flame till the bottoms inside the rims were well coloured with smoke. The girls watched her curiously. "Now, I'm ready!" she announced, "but I want a messenger. Elyned, you go and tap at VA door and say we shall be very pleased if they care to come and try a most interesting experiment. Mind you put it politely, and for your life don't snigger."