CHAPTER XI

THE PROCESSION OF THE SAWNEYS

"Goodness! what can that be?" demanded Nan.

Rap! rap! rap! the knock was repeated.

"Did you lock that door, Bess?" exclaimed Nan.

Before her chum could answer, the knob was turned and the door swung slowly open. Several figures crowded about the opening portal. It was no summons by one of the teachers, as Nan and Bess had expected. The first figure that appeared clearly to the startled vision of the two chums was rather appalling.

It was a tall girl with a pillow case drawn over her head and shoulders. Her arms were thrust through two holes in the sides and she could see through two smaller holes burned in the pillow case. She leaned on a broom, the brush part of which was also covered with white muslin. Upon this background was drawn a horned owl in charcoal.

This horned owl was no more solemn than were the girls themselves who came filing in behind their leader. They came in two by two and circled around the work table which was set across the room at the foot of the two beds. The second couple bore a big tea-tray and on that tray reposed--_the forgotten lunch box Bess had dropped under the supper table!_

Poor Bess uttered a horrified gasp; Nan came near disgracing herself in her chum's eyes forever, by exploding into laughter. There was a faint giggle from some hysterical girl down the line and the leader rapped smartly upon the floor with the handle of the decorated broom.

"Ladies!" ejaculated the leader, her voice somewhat muffled behind the pillowslip.

"Votes for women!" was the faint response from somewhere in the line.

"Silence in the ranks!" exclaimed Laura Polk, snatching the tin tray away from her partner and banging on it with her fist. The lunch box, decorated with a soiled bow of violet ribbon, had been placed on the table.

"Ladies!" repeated the girl behind the mask. "We have with us to-night, in our very midst, as it were, two sawneys who should be initiated into all the rites and mysteries of Lakeview Hall."

"Hear! hear!" sepulchrally came from the red-haired girl.

"You'd better keep still, too, Laura," admonished another girl.

"Oh! very well!" answered Laura.

"These sawneys must be taught their place," pursued the leader of the gay company.

The term "sawney" in the lumber camps and upon the Great Lakes, means tyro, or novice. These girls had picked up the phrase from their brothers, without doubt. Bess thought it a particularly objectionable name.

"First of all," said the girl in the pillowslip, "they must join our procession and march as shall be directed. Fall in, sawneys, behind the first two guards. Refuse at your peril!"

Nan's mind was already made up. This was only fun--it was a great game of ridicule. To refuse to join in the sport would mark her and Bess for further, and future, punishment.

Before her chum could object, Nan seized her and ran her right into line ahead of the red-haired girl and her companion.

"Ready! March!" commanded the masked girl.

"Hold on!" objected Laura Polk. "These two sawneys ought to be made to eat their lunch."

Bess fairly snorted, she was so angry. But Nan would not let her pull away. She cried, before her chum could say anything:

"Oh! we promise to eat it all before we go to bed."

"That will do," declared the leader. "Be still, Polk. March!"

Against her will at first, then because she did not know what else to do, Bess Harley went along beside her chum. "The Procession of the Sawneys"--quite a famous institution, by the way, at Lakeview Hall--was begun.

"Where's the next innocent?" demanded one girl, hoarsely.

"Number Eighteen, on this corridor," was the reply. "That girl from Wauhegan."

"Wau--what-again?" sputtered Laura Polk.

"There, there, Polk!" admonished the masked leader. "Never mind your bad puns. Here we are. Attention!"

The procession halted. The leader banged the door three times as she had at Number Seven, with the handle of the broom.

"Come in! don't stop to knock," called somebody inside.

"There! that's the way to treat us," grunted Laura, as the door swung inward.

"Sh!" the girls all became silent.

There was a light in the room and a tall, thin girl, with rather homely features but a beautiful set of teeth, scrambled up from the floor where she had been sitting cross-legged, arranging her lower bureau drawer.

"Gracious--goodness--Agnes!" she gasped, when she saw the head of the procession.

Then silence fell again--that is, human voices ceased. But the visiting girls marked instantly the peculiar fact that the room sounded like a clock-shop, with all the clocks going.

There was an alarm clock hung by a ribbon right beside the head of one of the two beds in the room. A little ormolu clock was ticking busily on the bureau, and an easel clock stood upon the work table. In the corner hung an old-fashioned cuckoo clock in one of the elaborately carved cases made in the Black Forest, and just at this moment the door at the top flew open and the Cuckoo jerked her head out and announced the time--nine o'clock.

This was too much for the risibility of the girls crowding in at the door, and no pounding of the broom handle could entirely quell the giggles.

"And she's wearing a watch!" gasped one girl. "And there's another hanging on the side of the mirror."

"Why, girls!" burst out Laura Polk. "We've certainly caught Miss Procrastination herself. You know, 'procrastination is the thief of time,' and this Wau--what-again girl must have stolen all these timepieces."

"Didn't either!" declared the occupant of the room. "Pop and I took 'em for a debt."

"Hush!" commanded the girl in the pillow case. "What is your name, sawney?"

"Amelia Boggs," was the prompt reply.

"Amelia, you must come with us," commanded the leader of the sawney procession.

"Oh! I haven't time," objected the victim.

There was another outburst of laughter at this.

"Let her take her time with her," Laura declared; and they proceeded to hang the alarm clock around Miss Boggs' neck, the ormolu on one arm and the table clock on the other. Both watches were pinned prominently on her chest, and thus adorned, the girl from Wauhegan was added to the procession.

It had certainly become a merry one by this time. Even Bess discovered that this sort of fun was all a good-natured play. She could not laugh at others and remain sullen herself; so her sky gradually cleared.

At the next door behind which a "sawney" lurked, instead of knocking, the leader set off the alarm-clock. It was a sturdy, loud-voiced alarm, and it buzzed and rattled vigorously.

The two girls inside, both the new one and the sophomore whose room she was to share, rushed to the door at this terrible din. This initiate was a little, fluffy, flaxen-haired, pink and white girl, of a very timid disposition. She had been put to room with Grace Mason, of whom Nan and Bess had heard before.

Nan was particularly interested in Grace, who seemed to be of a very retiring disposition, and was very pretty. But her new room-mate was even more timid. She at once burst into tears when she saw the crowd of strange girls, having been told that the girls of Lakeview Hall hazed all strangers unmercifully.

The visiting party tied a pillow case on the flaxen-haired girl for a bib, and made her carry a towel in each hand for handkerchiefs. One girl carried a pail and bath sponge, and the procession halted at frequent intervals while imaginary pools of tears were sponged up from the floor before the victim's feet.

The procession might have continued indefinitely had not Mrs. Cupp appeared at ten o'clock and put a stop to it.

"You're over time, young ladies, half an hour," she said in her abrupt way. "A bad example to the new pupils, and to your juniors. Postpone any more of this till to-morrow night. To your rooms!"

They scattered to their rooms. Mrs. Cupp's word was law. She was Dr. Prescott's first assistant, and had the interior management of the school in her very capable hands. There was nothing very motherly or comforting about Mrs. Cupp. But Nan decided that Mrs. Cupp was not really wholly unsympathetic after all.

Nan and Bess hurried back to Number Seven, Corridor Four. All Bess' anger and tears had evaporated, and she was full of talk and laughter. Moreover, she and Nan ate every crumb of the shoe-box lunch before they went to bed!