“What time is it, Hilary,—please?” Isabel peeped through a few inches of space as she held the door knob. Girls were not supposed to visit during study hours.

“Well,” said Hilary, laying down her pencil and looking over at the clock, “by the world’s regulator it is eight-thirty.”

“Why, no, Hilary,” protested Isabel, who had decided to enter and was now looking at the clock herself. “It’s eight-forty-five; can’t you count time?”

“That is where you are mistaken, Miss Hunt. We have a very remarkable clock. Subtract fifteen minutes and you have the time. What day is this, Lilian?”

“Wednesday.”

“I thought so. I always set it right on Sunday night, Isabel. It gains five minutes a day. Compute the time till Wednesday night. Q. E. D.”

“Quod erat demonstrandum,” filled in Isabel. “I’m taking geometry myself this year. You girls ought to have heard Dr. Norris call me down in class the other day. I was not sure of the demonstration at all but I went through with it and wound up grinning with ‘which was to be proved,’ and Dr. Norris just smiled and said, ‘and which remains to be proved, Miss Hunt!’”

“Quod erat demonstrandum,” quoted Betty in appreciation and looking off into space, she traced angles and circles with both hands and feet.

“Think what a teacher Betty will make,” laughed Lilian.

“Do let me fix the clock for you,” said Isabel, “Who has the exact time?”

“Cathalina’s wrist watch is at the jeweler’s, Betty left hers on Juliet’s chiffonier and Lilian lost hers last summer. She is promised one for Christmas. But anyhow, we’d forget it was fixed and be all mixed up!”

“I kept mine on one day when I went in swimming, and when I finally took it to the jeweler, he said I’d have to have new works. If I’d put some oil in it or something, or dried it right away, he said, it might have been all right. It seems that works rust. They aren’t just gold or silver or jewels as I thought!”

“Your pretty little watch!” sighed Hilary.

“Yes,” said Isabel, bravely, “I’ve had a weep or two over it, and of course I shan’t break the news to Father till I go home at Christmas, if I do, I’m going to get an alarm clock, too, the first time I go in to Greycliff. Didn’t you ever think of having your clock regulated, Hilary?”

“O, yes. But I find that it will be about as expensive as buying a new clock and I’m hoping that it will take a notion some day to run as it should. You see I’m attached to that clock!”

“So am I,” declared Cathalina. “It’s the very first alarm clock I ever got up by.”

“If you will cling to this timepiece, then, as it is,” said Isabel, “why not make out a schedule and hang it up, so any of us who happen to be here, or who dash madly in, in the course of our wild careers, will not be misled?”

“Very good, Miss Hunt. I like your idea. Cathalina, you are the artist, will you make out the schedule?”

“I’ll put one up tomorrow some time and illuminate in color if you like.”

“Just put at the top ‘Procrastination is the thief of time,’ please, for me,” said Betty.

“By the way, Betty,” said Isabel, whose conscience seemed to have stopped hurting at visiting during study hours. “It looks as if our trip with the girls to the cave will have to be put off indefinitely, doesn’t it? Did you notice what Miss Randolph said this morning?”

Betty and Cathalina both nodded. Hilary and Lilian had evidently not applied Miss Randolph’s remarks as interesting them particularly. Isabel struck an attitude and with ridiculous gestures of which Miss Randolph could never have been guilty, repeated nearly word for word what the principal had announced:

“‘I understand that one or two beach parties have been held beyond permitted limits and it occurs to me that some of you may not be familiar with our rules on that point. Greycliff grounds proper, which include the grove only as far as the ‘high hill,’ are the limits, with the exception of the beach as far as the breakwater on the side toward the Village of Greycliff and the river on the other side. The beach in recreation hours is always guarded during the season. In winter, however, special permission may be obtained for any kind of an excursion. There will be the regular winter sports which will occupy all the time you have to spare from your studies. It will always be announced when the ice on the river is safe for skating. No girl is to attempt it otherwise.’”

“How do you remember like that, Isabel? That is almost exactly what she said.”

“From early youth, Cathalina, I have been committing the words of the wise and great! You should have seen the shows that Billy and I used to get up when we were little. Shall I give a little tragedy now?”

“Spare us!” exclaimed Lilian, with pretended anguish.

“I remember what my opponents say in debate, too, that I may answer their arguments. Honestly, though, girls, I don’t always get the words just right. I must have tried to remember this morning. We’ll have to coax Patty to go with us some time. Miss Randolph did say ‘unchaperoned,’ I forgot that; we could go with some chaperone outside of limits.”

“It’s my opinion that we’d better leave that cave alone,” said Betty, while Isabel and Cathalina looked at her in some surprise, for was not Betty the one who suggested that the last trip should not be talked about?

“Sit down, Isabel,” said Betty, “I think I’d like to tell the girls about our experience. We thought at first we wouldn’t just yet, girls, but it’s rather interesting and some of you might better know about it.”

“There goes the bell, Betty,” said Isabel. “Wait till I get Pauline and the rest who were with us on the first trip to come over.”

In a few minutes the girls of the other suite, with Avalon, too, were in Lakeview, listening to the tale which Betty and Isabel had to relate of their visit and what they had seen. The story did not lose anything in Isabel’s vivid description, and nothing was omitted except Betty’s recognition of the chief actor, of which no one except Cathalina knew.

The next day was a busy one. “It is dreadful the way things seem to pile up toward the end of the week,” sighed Betty.

“Yes, all the things I get ahead in get almost ahead of me, by Friday anyway. I have to study every spare minute today. We wasted a good half hour last night. I’ll not get any schedule made. That is rather silly anyway. It is ridiculous to let the clock get so much ahead. You ought to fix it in the middle of the week anyway, Hilary.”

“Of course I ought,” acknowledged Hilary, “but we have the school clocks and the bells and don’t use it much. I’ll fix it tonight.”

The girls hurried down to breakfast and then were plunged into the vortex of classes and lessons. In the middle of the morning, Juliet brought over Betty’s watch and not finding any one in the suite left it in plain view on the table.

Lunch over, Hilary, Lilian and Betty who were to recite in senior Latin the first hour in the afternoon, hurried upstairs to go over it together, while Cathalina, whose class in Cicero came later, strolled off to the library with her Cicero text.

“Of course we’d have to have a longer lesson than usual in this hard place,” growled Betty. “O, here’s my watch. Somebody brought it over. It’s stopped, of course. Did you change the clock, Hilary?”

“No, and I won’t bother to fix it till night. Allow about three minutes for the gain so far today.”

Betty set her watch, remarking that she would look at the clock in the recitation room and get it just right. They had just decided upon the rendering of a hard passage when a knock came at the door and Dorothy Appleton with two more senior girls came in to see how the girls’ translation accorded with theirs. And while they were all listening to Hilary as she read the disputed lines, a delegation of five others came in, Julia Merton in the lead. “Good,” said she, “we’re just in time, I see. There’s one line that doesn’t make any sense to me at all. How do you read it, Hilary?”

“Read the whole lesson, Hilary,” said Dorothy. “It’s so hard and has so many new words that I can’t remember them.”

“Mercy, no, child,” warned Julia. “Look at the clock. It’s time to go now, but—”

“No it isn’t,” said Hilary. “Our clock is twenty minutes fast, or nearly that. There’s plenty of time!”

“I thought I heard the bell as I came in.”

“It must have been for gym or something. I didn’t hear it,” said Lilian, “but then we don’t always hear it when our windows are down. Are you sure you didn’t fix the clock?”

“Perfectly sure,” said Hilary with decision. Betty was already showing two or three girls the why and how of her reading. Then Hilary began, while the girls listened, took notes and stopped her occasionally to ask a question or two. “The notes do not say one word about that,” Dorothy remarked.

“No, of course, the very thing you want is never mentioned!” replied Julia, quite unfairly to the very learned gentleman who edited the text.

Promptly at a few minutes of the time for class to begin, the senior girls trooped down the stairs and over to the library building where Dr. Carver’s recitation room was located. There was no one in the halls, and the murmurs of voices came from one or two recitation rooms as they passed.

“We must be late after all,” said Hilary. “Perhaps the old clock decided to keep time.”

The door to Dr. Carver’s recitation room was closed. “They’ve begun,” said Lilian. “Do you remember the fun last year when Isabel put up the notice that there would be no Cicero?”

“Do I?” replied Betty.

With some hesitation and not a little trepidation, Dorothy Appleton, who was in the lead, opened the door. The girls all started in and stopped in surprise and embarrassment as with one accord they glanced first at the clock on the wall opposite and then at the astonished portion of the senior class which faced them. Dr. Carver spoke in much annoyance as one or two of the girls started toward her as if to explain.

“We are in the midst of the recitation, young ladies. Take your seats. You may explain this inexcusable tardiness later.” Hastily, and in much confusion of mind and spirit, the “young ladies” sought their own seats and the lesson proceeded.

“What on earth kept you girls?” wrote Juliet on a piece of paper and passed it to Hilary.

“Something wrong with my clock,” wrote Hilary on the back, returning the paper to Juliet. Hilary was not given to writing notes in class, but this whole situation was irregular.

Reading Hilary’s reply, Juliet at first smiled and looking at Hilary formed with her lips the words “poor Hilary,” for she quite feared for the girls’ grades in Dr. Carver’s hands, and wondered if they would be permitted to make up the work, or if they would be counted absent, with a zero to their credit. No one could tell what Dr. Carver would do with her ideas of strict discipline. Then a disagreeable thought came to Juliet. There was a pang of memory, with a sinking of the heart! “O, Hilary!” she wrote, “I set your clock right, when I came in to leave Betty’s watch. Was that it?”

Hilary read, looked up at Juliet, across the two girls who sat between, and at the look on Juliet’s face she could scarcely control her own. She coughed, put her face in her handkerchief, and moved a little in order that she might be screened from Miss Carver’s view. She felt that eagle eye flashed in her direction. It was dangerous to lose the place in any class, but particularly in Dr. Carver’s. That fact soon sobered Hilary, and she prepared to be called on, rather hoping, indeed, that she would have a chance to make a grade. Fortunately, she caught the last phrase in the translation of the girl who was reciting and in the discussion which followed on the syntax of a word managed to find where the class was reading. It was just in time, for “Miss Lancaster” was the next call.

At the close of the recitation hour a group of amazed girls gathered. “For pit-tee’s sake,” said Pauline, “we wondered why you didn’t come and didn’t come, and Dr. Carver looked so mad at having about half the class gone. She asked us what was the matter and nobody knew,—what was the trouble?”

“My old clock,” replied Hilary. Just then the penitent Juliet joined Hilary. “Come on, Hilary, let’s go up to Dr. Carver and explain. I came in to bring Betty’s watch and noticed that your clock was all wrong, so I set it back right by my watch. Betty’s had stopped, but I didn’t wind it, afraid to fuss with it. I never thought—”

“Of course you didn’t. It was all my fault for letting the clock go that way.”

The other girls filed out into the hall, while Hilary and Juliet went up to Dr. Carver’s desk to explain. Cathalina, coming in for her Cicero lesson, was hailed by the crowd and asked why she was on time. She looked blankly at them, while laughter ran round the circle. “I just came from the library,” said she.

“O, you weren’t in your room, then; it is explained!”

Still wondering, Cathalina went on into the class room, leaving the buzzing crowd of girls who moved on and out of the building.

“How did it happen,” asked Hilary, “that none of the rest of you girls had the time?”

“I did,” said Julia, “but by the ‘irony of fate’ I never looked at my watch and swallowed everything you said,—after hearing the bell, too!”

“I am touched at your confidence,” laughed Hilary.

“I had my watch on, too,” acknowledged Dorothy, “but I was just thinking about those puzzling lines in the lesson.”

“We all were,” said one of the other girls, “and when Hilary insisted that there was ‘plenty of time,’ of course we believed her.”

“Don’t blame Hilary,” said Juliet. “It was all my fault. I thought I was doing a kindness instead of upsetting the whole schedule and making half the senior class late! I expected Dr. Carver to be horrid, especially if she remembered last year, but she was real fair and said we could make up the work if we wanted to and she would consult Miss Randolph about the tardiness.”

“After this,” said Hilary, “I fix my clock every day or get a new one.”

“Don’t worry, Hilary, we all think it a big joke, and shall never forget you as you sat—all of us in blissful ignorance that class was in session—reading the whole hard lesson to the crowd!” Thus spoke Dorothy, president of the senior academy class.