CHAPTER XXII

PUNISHMENT

Mrs. Cupp proved that she possessed a hearty appetite, and that the fright she had suffered had not impaired it. She accepted a second helping of salad and two plates of ice-cream followed, with several fancy cakes.

"I must say," she observed, in a more cordial mood than any of the girls had ever seen her display before. "I must say that whoever chose these refreshments showed more regard for your digestions than usually is the case in such midnight feasts. And as I remember my own schooldays, we never had anything on such occasions that was really fit for a girl to put in her stomach."

"Oh, Mrs. Cupp!" exclaimed Laura, "did you really have parties like this when you were a girl at boarding school?"

"I was just saying, Laura, that they were _not_ like this," returned the matron. "But schoolgirls are all alike, if banquets are not."

The girls giggled at that retort. It did seem funny to hear Mrs. Cupp joke, in even the grimmest manner.

But Mrs. Cupp was rapidly recovering from her softer mood. Laura said afterward that if it took a ghost-fright to make Mrs. Cupp "livable," if the matron were threatened with the guillotine, for instance, she might really be good company while the effect of the announcement of the coming tragedy lasted.

"I want to know who the guilty party is," said the Lakeview Hall matron. "Who got up this party, and who paid for it?"

"I'm the guilty one," said Nan, promptly. "I must be held solely responsible."

"Oh, no, she is not alone responsible. I helped," cried Bess, "and if Nan is to be punished, I ought to be, too."

"And so did I," Amelia put in. "'Twon't be fair for only one to be punished."

"And you know," said the red-haired girl, with saucy significance, "we _all_ helped eat Nan's lovely supper."

"Ahem! I see the point, Laura," Mrs. Cupp observed. "But it does not change the facts. A rule of the Hall has been broken--flagrantly broken. That you girls fled away to this spot for your reprehensible act adds to the offence. We are responsible to your parents and guardians for your health and safety. The result of an escapade like this nobody can foretell. Something might have happened in this old boathouse to harm you girls and bring ill-repute to the Hall."

The party of school-law breakers looked rather solemn. Mrs. Cupp folded the napkin she had used and brushed the crumbs from her black broadcloth skirt.

"Nothing excuses an infraction of the rules. But I am inclined to show leniency to everybody but the prime mover in this affair. And that is----"

"Me!" gasped Bess Harley. "Nan would never have thought of having a supper but for me."

"But I chose this place for it, and it was my money paid for it," cried Nan.

"How much did it cost?" asked Mrs. Cupp, briskly.

"More than twenty-five dollars," confessed Nan, blushing.

"Mercy on us! What extravagance!" cried the matron. "You shall be punished for that, if for nothing else, Nancy Sherwood," and she got up quickly. "Now, girls, is there anything left?"

"Some cream and cake, Mrs. Cupp," Amelia promptly announced.

"Take it up to the Hall for Susan and the other maids," ordered the matron. "Miss Sherwood, Miss Harley, Miss Polk and Miss Boggs may come down here some time to-morrow and clean up. I will speak to Dr. Prescott about the punishment to be meted out to the chief offender. She will be vexed about it, I have no doubt."

Laura sidled up to her as the matron prepared to set forth with the truants for the Hall, and whispered:

"But wasn't that mayonnaise lovely, Mrs. Cupp?"

"You cannot cajole me, Miss Polk," the matron said.

This speech gave the fun-makers a feeling of dejection. Most of them did not know how clear Dr. Prescott's sense of justice was. It looked as though Nan Sherwood was in for a lot of trouble. And she had given them such a delightful supper!

It so troubled their minds that even the timid ones thought no more of "the black dog" as they filed out of the boathouse. Nan locked the door, and she and Mrs. Cupp came in the rear as the whole party scuttled up the long flight of steps to the brow of the bluff. Mrs. Cupp walked slowly and leaned upon Nan's arm.

"Don't you know who that was out there in the bushes, Nancy?" the school matron asked.

"No, Mrs. Cupp," declared Nan. "Only I know it couldn't be a ghost."

"How about Grace Mason's brother?"

"Walter?" cried Nan, in surprise.

"Yes. He helped you get those things over from Ricolletti's, didn't he?"

"Ye--es," admitted Nan. She feared that the admission might get Walter into trouble.

"It seems to me like a boy's trick," Mrs. Cupp said reflectively. "I should have stopped to see who it was at the time. But I _was_ afraid. My sister and I are in trouble enough as it stands, and I was nervous, I suppose," she added, more to herself than to Nan.

"I'm very sure, Mrs. Cupp, that Walter would not frighten anybody."

"Not if he thought he could save you girls from getting caught?" asked the matron, shrewdly.

"I am quite sure Walter was nowhere near the boathouse at that time," Nan said, with confidence. "I know he telephoned to his sister this evening from their house. Couldn't you call up his mother or father, and find out if he went out again after that time?"

"Good idea! I'll do it," said Mrs. Cupp. "You report to Dr. Prescott to-morrow, after chapel."

This order did not make Nan sleep any more soundly that night. It was quite twelve o'clock when the girls separated under the sharp eye of Mrs. Cupp, and scattered to their rooms. Bess kissed Nan fondly before she crept into her own bed.

"I don't care, Nancy!" she breathed, "we would have had a lovely time if it hadn't been for old Cupp!"

"And the one who set her after us," suggested Nan.

"Oh! who could she be? Linda?"

"We'll never know, I s'pose," said Nan. "I thought at first Linda and her crowd had robbed us."

"Oh!"

"But I guess whoever did that, scared Mrs. Cupp, too."

"The ghost?"

"Yes. If you wish to call him that. But he is a ghost with a big appetite."

"Dear me! that's so, isn't it?" agreed Bess. "Well! I--don't--know--ow-oo!" Yawn--sigh--murmur, and Bess was off to the Land of Nod.

Not so Nan. She tossed about for a long time ere she could find oblivion. Her conscience pricked her, and a prickly conscience is just as unhappy a bedfellow as a porcupine would be.

What would "Momsey" and "Papa Sherwood" say if they heard of this escapade? Nan realized that she had done wrong in yielding to the seductive suggestion of the secret supper. She might have given her girl friends a treat in some way that would not have broken the school rules.

She was sorry, very sorry indeed, that she had done this. More than a few tears wet Nan Sherwood's pillow before she finally dropped asleep. Nor had she found relief from this feeling of depression the next morning, when she went alone to Dr. Prescott's office.

This was the first time Nan had been sent to interview the principal of Lakeview Hall for any such reason. She had quite fallen in love with Dr. Beulah Prescott on the evening of her arrival at the school; and Nan Sherwood was of too truly an affectionate disposition to hurt or offend anybody whom she loved.

"Dear, dear, Nancy Sherwood," said the principal, in a worried way. "I never expected to receive such a report about you, of all my new girls. Leader of a party of girls that steals out of the Hall after bedtime, feasts on contraband eatables--Ahem! where's the list of this 'forbidden fruit'? Here it is! Sandwiches, salad, cake, chocolate and coffee, ice-cream. Dear me! dear me! what will your digestions be like if you keep on in this way?"

"I don't know, Dr. Prescott," Nan said faintly, as the preceptress halted for breath.

"I see no pickles, olives or cheese on the bill-of-fare," said the doctor, lowering her lorgnette. "How is that? A schoolgirl picnic without those delectables?"

"My--my money didn't hold out," confessed Nan, her eyes suddenly dancing. Dr. Prescott was not proving so difficult, after all.

"Mrs. Cupp reports only you for punishment," said the principal, after a momentary smile. "Don't you think the others deserve punishment, too?"

"No, Dr. Prescott," Nan was prompt to say. "It wouldn't have happened, and the other girls would not have been down there at the boathouse, if it hadn't been for me."

"Well, possibly that may be so. That was Mrs. Cupp's opinion, and we will let it rest at that. Also, Mrs. Cupp recommended you to mercy, Nancy."

This surprised Nan a good deal. She had not thought the stern matron was given at all to mercy.

"Nevertheless, we must show our disapproval of such reprehensible actions," continued Dr. Prescott. "You are sentenced to solitary recreation hours for a week. On your honor, remember. No conversation with the other girls, save in study and recitation hours, until a week from to-day. Remember! Not even with Miss Harley. That is all, Nancy."