After the sad fiasco recorded in the last chapter, Marjorie's interest in autographs languished. She took up photography instead, and bartered a quite nice little collection of foreign stamps with one of the Seniors in exchange for a second-hand Kodak. Of course, it was much too late in the year for snapshots, but she managed to get a few time exposures on bright days, and enjoyed herself afterwards in the developing-room. She wanted to make a series of views of the school and send them to her father and to her brothers, for she knew how much they appreciated such things at the front. In his last letter to her, Daddy had said: "I am glad you and Dona are happy at Brackenfield, and wish I could picture you there. I expect it is something like a boys' school. Tell me about your doings. I love to have your letters, even though I may not have time to answer them."

Daddy's letters were generally of the round-robin description, and were handed on from one member to another of the family, but this had been specially written to Marjorie and addressed to Brackenfield, so it was a great treasure. She determined to do her best to satisfy the demands for photos."You darling!" she said, kissing his portrait. "I think you're a thousand times nicer-looking than any of the other girls' fathers! I do wonder when you'll get leave and come home. If it's not in the holidays I declare I'll run away and see you!"

In her form Marjorie was making fair progress. She liked Miss Duckworth, her teacher, and on the whole did not find the work too hard; her brains were bright when she chose to use them, and at present the thought of the Christmas report, which would be sent out for Daddy to look at, spurred on her efforts. So far Marjorie had not made any very great chums at school. She inclined to Mollie Simpson, but Mollie, like herself, was of a rather masterful disposition, and squabbles almost invariably ensued before the two had been long together. With the three girls who shared her dormitory she was on quite friendly, though not warm, terms. They had at first considered Marjorie inclined to "boss", and had made her thoroughly understand that, as a new girl, such an attitude could not be tolerated in her. So long as she was content to manage her own cubicle and not theirs they were pleasant enough, but they united in a firm triumvirate of resistance whenever symptoms of swelled head began to arise in their room-mate.

One evening about the end of November the four girls were dressing for supper in their dormitory.

"It's a grizzly nuisance having to change one's frock!" groused Betty Moore. "It seems so silly to array oneself in white just to eat supper and do a little sewing afterwards. I hate the bother.""Do you?" exclaimed Irene Andrews. "Now I like it. I think it would be perfectly piggy to wear the same serge dress from breakfast to bedtime. Brackenfield scores over some schools in that. They certainly make things nice for us in the evenings."

"Um—yes, tolerably," put in Sylvia Page. "We don't get enough music, in my opinion."

"We have a concert every Saturday night, and charades on Wednesdays for those who care to act."

"I'd like gym practice every evening," said Betty. "Then I needn't change my frock. When I leave school I mean to go on a farm, and wear corduroy knickers and leggings and thick boots all the time. It'll be gorgeous. I love anything to do with horses, so perhaps they'll let me plough. What shall you do, Marjorie?"

"Something to help the war, if it isn't over. I'll nurse, or drive a wagon, or ride a motor-bike with dispatches."

"I'd rather ride a horse than a bike any day," said Betty. "I used to hunt before the war. You needn't smile. I was twelve when the war began, and I'd been hunting since I was seven, and got my first pony. It was a darling little brown Shetland named Sheila. I cried oceans when it died. My next was a grey one named Charlie, and Tom, our coachman, taught me to take fences. He put up some little hurdles in a field, and kept making them higher and higher till I could get Charlie over quite well. Oh, it was sport! I wish I'd a pony here.""There used to be riding lessons before the war," sighed Irene. "Mother had promised me I should learn. But now, of course, there are no horses to be had, and the riding-master, Mr. Hall, has gone to the front. I wonder if things will ever be the same again? If I don't learn to ride properly while I'm young I'll never have a decent seat afterwards, I suppose."

"You certainly won't," Betty assured her. "You ought to have begun when you were seven."

"Oh dear! And I shall be sixteen on Wednesday!"

"Is it your birthday next Wednesday?"

"Yes, but it won't be much fun. We're not allowed to do anything particular, worse luck."

It was one of the Brackenfield rules that no notice must be taken of birthdays. Girls might receive presents from home, but they were not to claim any special privileges or exemptions, to ask for exeats, or to bring cakes into the dining-hall. In a school of more than two hundred pupils it would have been difficult continually to make allowances first to one girl and then to another, and though in a sense all recognized the necessity of the rule, those whose birthdays fell during term-time bemoaned their hard fate.

It struck Marjorie as a very cheerless proceeding. She found an opportunity, when Irene was out of the way, to talk to her room-mates on the subject.

"Look here," she began. "It's Renie's birthday on Wednesday. I do think it's the limit that we're not supposed to take any notice of it. I vote we get up a little blow-out on our own for her. Let's have a beano after we're in bed."

"What a blossomy idea! Good for you, Marjorie! I'm your man if there's any fun on foot," agreed Betty enthusiastically.

"It'll be lovely; but how are we going to manage the catering department?" enquired Sylvia.

"Some of the Juniors will be going on parade to Whitecliffe on Wednesday. I'll ask Dona to ask them to get a few things for us. We must have a cake, and some candles, and some cocoa, and some condensed milk, and anything else they can smuggle. Are you game?"

"Rather! If you'll undertake to be general of the commissariat department."

"All serene! Don't say a word about it to anyone else at St. Elgiva's. I'll swear Dona to secrecy, and the St. Ethelberta kids aren't likely to tell. They do the same themselves sometimes. And don't on any account let Renie have wind of it. It's to be a surprise."

On Wednesday evening, before supper, Marjorie met Dona by special appointment in the gymnasium, and the latter hastily thrust a parcel into her arms.

"You wouldn't believe what difficulty I had to get it," she whispered. "Mona and Peachy weren't at all willing. They said they didn't see why they should take risks for St. Elgiva's, and you might run your own beano. I had to bribe them with ever so many of my best crests before I could make them promise. They say Miss Jones has got suspicious now about bulgy coats, and actually feels them. They have to sling bags under their skirts and it's so uncomfy walking home. However, they did their best for you. There's a cake, and three boxes of Christmas-tree candles, and a tin of condensed milk. They couldn't get the cocoa, because just as they were going to buy it Miss Jones came up. Everything's dearer, and you didn't give them enough. Mona paid, and you owe her fivepence halfpenny extra."

"I'll give it you to-morrow at lunch-time. Thank them both most awfully. I think they're regular trumps. I'll give them some of my crests if they like—I'm not really collecting and don't want them. Think of us about midnight if you happen to wake. I wish you could join us."

"So do I. But that's quite out of the question. Never mind; we have bits of fun ourselves sometimes."

Marjorie managed to convey her parcel unnoticed to No. 9 Dormitory. According to arrangement, Betty and Sylvia were waiting there for her. Irene, still oblivious of the treat in store for her, had not yet come upstairs. The three confederates undid their package, and gloated over its contents. The cake was quite a respectable one for war-time, to judge from appearances it had cherries in it, and there was a piece of candied peel on the top. The little boxes of Christmas-tree candles held half a dozen apiece, assorted colours. They took sixteen of them, sharpened the ends, and stuck them down into the cake.

"When it's lighted it will look A 1," purred Betty."How are we going to open the tin of condensed milk?" asked Sylvia.

"It's one of those tins you prise up," said Marjorie jauntily. "Give it to me. A penny's the best weapon. Here you are! Quite easy."

"Yes, but there's another lid underneath. You're not at the milk yet."

Marjorie's feathers began to fall. She was not quite as clever as she had thought.

"Here, I'll do it," said Betty, snatching the tin. "Take down a picture and pull the nail out of the wall, and give me a boot to hammer with. You've to go through this arrow point and then the thing prises up. Steady! Here we are!"

"Cave! Renie's coming. Stick the things away!"

Marjorie hastily seized the feast, and bestowed it inside her wardrobe. Thanks to the drawn curtains of her cubicle Irene had not obtained even a glimpse.

"What are you three doing inside there?" she asked curiously, but no one would tell. The secret was not to be given away too soon.

The conspirators had decided that it would be wiser not to ask any other girls to join the party, but to keep the affair entirely to their own dormitory.

"They'll make such a noise if we have them in, and it will wake the Acid Drop and bring her down upon us," said Sylvia.

"Besides which, it's only a small cake and wouldn't go round," stated Betty practically.

Irene went to bed in a fit of the blues. Only half her presents had turned up, and two of her aunts had not written to her.

"It's been a rotten birthday," she groaned. "I knew it would be hateful having it at school. Why wasn't I born in the holidays? There ought to be a law regulating births to certain times of the year. If I were head of a school I'd let every girl go home for her birthday. Don't speak to me! I feel scratchy!"

Her room-mates chuckled, and for the present left her alone. Sylvia began to sing a song about tears turning to smiles and sorrow to joy, until Irene begged her to stop.

"It's the limit to-night! When I'm blue the one thing I can't stand is anybody trying to cheer me up. It gets on my nerves!"

"Sleep it off, old sport!" laughed Marjorie. "I don't mind betting that when you wake up you'll feel in a very different frame of mind."

At which remark the others spluttered.

"You'll find illumination, in fact," hinnied Betty.

"I think you're all most unkind!" quavered Irene.

The confederates had decided to wait until the magic hour of midnight before they began their beano. They felt it was wiser to give Miss Norton plenty of time to go to bed and fall asleep. She often sat up late in the study reading, and they did not care to risk a visit from her. A bracket clock on the stairs sounded the quarters, and Marjorie, as the lightest sleeper, undertook to keep awake and listen to its chimes. It was rather difficult not to doze when the room was dark and her companions were breathing quietly and regularly in the other beds. The time between the quarters seemed interminable. At eleven o'clock she heard Miss Norton walk along the corridor and go into her bedroom. After that no other sound disturbed the establishment, and Marjorie repeated poetry and even dates and French verbs to keep herself awake.

At last the clock chimed its full range and struck twelve times. She sat up and felt for the matches.

Betty and Sylvia, who had gone to sleep prepared, woke with the light, but it was a more difficult matter to rouse Irene. She turned over in bed and grunted, and they were obliged to haul her into a sitting position before she would open her eyes.

"What's the matter? Zepps?" she asked drowsily.

"No, no; it's your birthday party. Look!" beamed the others.

On a chair by her bedside stood the cake, resplendent with its sixteen little lighted candles, and also the tin of condensed milk. Irene blinked at them in amazement.

"Jubilate! What a frolicsome joke!" she exclaimed. "I say, this is awfully decent of you!"

"We told you you'd wake up in better spirits, old sport!" purred Marjorie. "I flatter myself those candles look rather pretty. You can tell your fortune by blowing them out."

"It's a shame to touch them," objected Irene.

"But we want some cake," announced Betty and Sylvia."Go on, give a good puff!" prompted Marjorie. "Then we can count how many you've blown out. Five! This year, next year, some time, never! This year! Goody! You'll have to be quick about it. It's almost time to be putting up the banns. Now again. Tinker, tailor, soldier! Lucky you! My plum stones generally give me beggar-man or thief. Silk, satin, muslin, rags; silk, satin! You've got all the luck to-night. Coach, carriage! You're not blowing fair, Renie! You did that on purpose so that it shouldn't come wheelbarrow! Only one candle left—let's leave it lighted while we cut the rest."

Everybody agreed that the cake was delicious. They felt they had never tasted a better in their lives, although it was a specimen of war-time cookery.

"I wish we could have got some cocoa," sighed Betty. "I tried to borrow a little and a spirit lamp from Meg Hutchinson, but she says they can't get any methylated spirit now."

"Condensed milk is delicious by itself," suggested Sylvia.

"Sorry we haven't a spoon," apologized Marjorie.

For lack of other means of getting at their sweet delicacy the girls dipped lead-pencils into the condensed milk and took what they could.

"It's rather like white honey," decided Betty after a critical taste. "Yes—I certainly think it's quite topping. It makes me think of Russian toffee.""Don't speak of toffee. We haven't made any since sugar went short. Jemima! I shall eat heaps when the war's over!"

"You greedy pig! You ought to leave it for the soldiers."

"But there won't be any soldiers then."

"Yes, there'll be some for years and years afterwards. They'll take some time, you know, to get well in the hospitals."

"Then there's a chance for me to nurse," exclaimed Marjorie. "I'm always so afraid the war will all be over before I've left school, and——"

"I say, what's that noise?" interrupted Irene anxiously. "If the Acid Drop drops on us she'll be very acid indeed."

For reply, Marjorie popped the condensed milk tin into her wardrobe, blew out the candle, and hopped into bed post-haste, an example which was followed by the others with equal dispatch. They were only just in time, for a moment later the door opened, and Miss Norton, clad in a blue dressing-gown, flashed her torchlight into the room. Seeing the girls all in bed, and apparently fast asleep, she did not enter, but closed the door softly, and they heard her footsteps walking away down the corridor.

"A near shave!" murmured Marjorie.

"Sh! sh! Don't let's talk. She may come back and listen outside," whispered Sylvia, with a keen distrust for Miss Norton's notions of vigilance.

Next morning the girls in No. 8 Dormitory mentioned that they had heard a noise during the night.

"Somebody walked down the passage," proclaimed Lennie Jackson. "Enid thought it was a ghost."

"I thought it was somebody walking in her sleep," maintained Daisy Shaw.

"Oh, how horrid!" shivered Barbara Wright. "I'd be scared to death of anyone sleep-walking. I'd rather meet a ghost any day."

"Did you see somebody?" enquired Betty casually.

"No, it was only what we heard—stealthy footsteps, you know, that moved softly along, just as they're described in a horrible book I read in the holidays—The Somnambulist it was called—about a man who was always going about in the night with fixed, stony eyes, and appearing on the tops of roofs and all sorts of spooky places. It gives me the creeps to think of it. Ugh!"

"When people walk in their sleep it's fearfully dangerous to awaken them," commented Daisy.

"Is it? Why?"

"Oh, it gives them such a terrible shock, they often don't get over it for ages! You ought to take them gently by the hand and lead them back to bed."

"And suppose they won't go?"

"Ask me a harder! I say, there's the second bell. Scootons nous vite! Do you want to get an order mark?"

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