"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!
CHAPTER XII
EVERYTHING NEW
Lessons were not taken up for several days after Nan Sherwood and Bess Harley arrived at Lakeview Hall. This gave them an opportunity for getting acquainted with the other girls and their strange surroundings, as well as the routine of the school.
At this time of the year the rising bell was at six and breakfast at seven. The girls could either spend the hour before breakfast in study or out-of-door recreation. The grounds connected with the Hall comprised all the plateau at the top of the bluff, with a mile of shore at its foot. At one place a roughly built, crooked flight of steps all the way down the face of the bluff, offered a path to the boathouse. By day that sprawling stone building was merely a place to shelter the school's many boats, and a boatkeeper was on hand to attend to the girls' needs. But at night, so it was whispered, the boathouse had a ghostly occupant.
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Nan Sherwood, with laughter, when she was told this. "What kind of a ghost?"
"A black ghost--all black," declared May Winslow, who seemed to be of a rather superstitious nature.
"You mean the ghost of a colored man?" demanded Nan.
"Oh! nobody ever saw his face. But he's all in black," Miss Winslow stated.
"Well! that's a novelty, at least," chuckled Nan. "Usually ghosts are sheeted in white, with phosphorescent eyes and clammy hands."
"Goodness!" gasped May. "Nobody ever got near enough to him to let him touch her! I should say not!"