Page:Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall.djvu/143

Rh goodies, should the French teacher get wind of the orgy.

"Forewarned is forearmed," urged Mary Cox. "We know what old Picolet is!"

"But 'four-armed' doesn't always mean 'fore-handed'," chuckled Jennie Stone.

"Nor !" snapped the Fox. "If you had four hands, Heavy, there would be little chance for any of the rest of us at Helen's party. My goodness me! how you would mow the good things away if you had four hands instead of two."

"It isn't that I'm really piggish," complained Miss Stone. "It's because I need more nourishment; there is so much of me, you know, Mary."

"And if you hadn't been stuffing yourself like a Strasburg goose all your life, there wouldn't be so much of you. Ha! it's the old story of the hen and the egg—which was here first? If you didn't eat so much you wouldn't be so big, and if you weren't so big you wouldn't eat so much."

All this, however, was said after the girls had begun to gather in Number 2 duet, and Belle Tingley, who had drawn the unlucky short toothpick, was banished to the corridor to keep watch—but with a great plateful of goodies and the "golden goblet" used in the hazing exercises, filled to the brim with hot chocolate.

"Though, if Miss Picolet is awake she'll smell