"They're topping!"

"How did you think of them?"

"I like King Alfred's legs!"

"Ingred, you look about a hundred!"

"Fil could scold!"

"Verity, what was a courtier doing rambling about a forest in a blue dressing-gown? It would get torn on the bushes!"

"I know. We told her so, but she would wear it!" declared Ingred. "She was just pig-headed over that dressing-gown!"

"Well, go and look at the Saxon pictures for yourself, in the history book!" retorted Verity, sticking to her point. "You'll see the courtiers in long flowing garments very like dressing-gowns. I think it was a capital idea, and the best I could do. There wasn't another rug for the kilt anyhow, and when other people have taken the best parts and the nicest costumes, you've just got to put up with anything you can find that's left."

"You did it so well," Ingred assured her hastily, for Verity had gone very pink, and her voice sounded distinctly offended. "I thought the way you dropped on one knee and cried: 'My liege lord! I am your humble socman!' was most impressive. What made you think of 'socman'?"

"Got it out of the history book," said Verity, slightly mollified. "It means a man who owned land, but wasn't quite as high up as a thane. I meant to bring in some more Saxon words, but I hadn't time."

"You must win the dormitory score again, and give us another performance," urged Mrs. Best. "I'm afraid it's too late for any more to-night, though we're all sorry to stop. Those juniors ought to be in bed. Janie and Doreen, if you'd like a quiet half-hour to finish your prep. you may go into my room. Somebody put the tables back, please, and be sure the trestles are in their right places this time, we don't want another collapse! Phyllis, your cough's worse. Nurse shall rub your chest with camphorated oil, and you mustn't kiss anybody. Betty too? I'll give you a lozenge, but don't suck it lying down in bed, in case you choke."

So saying, Mrs. Best, who generally mothered the hostel, dismissed her large family and bustled away with Nurse to superintend the putting to bed of the juniors and the due care of those who might be regarded as even ever so slightly on the sick list. It was perhaps owing to the excitement of their spirited performance that the members of No. 2 Dormitory could not get to sleep that night. They all lay wide awake in bed, and told each other tales about burglars, in whispers. Verity's stories were blood-curdling in the extreme; she was a great reader, and had got them from magazines. Her three room-mates listened with cold shivers running down their spines. According to Verity's accounts it was a common and every day occurrence for a house-breaker to force an entrance, murder the occupants, and depart, leaving a case to baffle the police until some amateur detective turned up and solved the mystery.

"Has it ever struck you that the hostel would be a very easy place to burgle?" asked Fil. "Those French windows have no shutters, and the glass could be cut with a diamond."

"Or the doors could be opened with a skeleton key!" quavered Nora.

"I suppose they generally wear goloshes, so as to tread softly," ventured Ingred.

"Wouldn't it be dreadful," continued Verity, whose mind still ran on magazine stories, "to marry a fascinating man whom you'd met by chance, and then find out that he was a gentleman-burglar? What would you do?"

"It often happens on the cinema," said Nora. "The girl wavers about in an agony whether to tell or not, and wrings her hands and rolls her eyes, like they always do roll them on the films, and then, just when things are at the very last gasp, the husband tumbles over a precipice, or is wrecked at sea, or smashed in a railway accident, and she marries the other, who's as good as gold, and loved her first."

"Is the man who loves you first always as good as gold?" asked Fil.

"Well, generally on the Pictures. He's loved you as a child, you see. You come on the film hand in hand, in socks, and he gives you his apple."

"But suppose they don't love you from a child?" said Fil plaintively. "I've only known a lot of horrid little boys whom I didn't care for in the least. None of them ever gave me his apple, though I remember one taking mine. Is the first fascinating man I meet the true lover or the burglar? How am I to know which is which?"

"You'd better let me be there to decide for you, child, or you'll be snapped up by the first adventurer that comes along," declared Nora. "Don't trust him if he has a mustache. 'Daring Dick of the Black Gang' had a little twisted mustache like Mephistopheles in 'Faust'."

"Oh dear! And the last piece I saw on the Pictures, the villain was clean shaven! That's no guide ............