"What does this mean?" she cried shrilly.
Vera and Elf breathed heavily, as if soundly sleeping.
"You're not asleep!" she declared, "and I insist that you answer me. Again I ask, what does this mean?"
Vera and Elf breathed harder than before, Vera adding a soft little snore.
"Oh, very well!" cried Miss Fenler. "If you are determined not to reply to-night, I will report you to Mrs. Marvin, and you may make your explanations to her to-morrow."
She left the room, her anger increased by their obstinate pretense of slumber.
Vera awoke long before daylight, and lay thinking.
"That's just the way I do things," she said in a voice barely above a whisper.
"I plan the fun, and always have a good time, that is '_most_' always, but it's sure to wind up in a scrape. I plan how to get into mischief. Why don't I ever plan how to get out?"
Elf stirred uneasily, and Vera gave her shoulder a vigorous shake.
"Wake up!" she commanded. "Wake up, and help me plan what we'd better say when we have to face Mrs. Marvin."
"Oh, I'm sleepy," drawled Elf. "We're smart enough to say something when she stares at us over her spectacles. We'll say we--"
A wee snore finished the sentence, and Vera turned over with a lurch that shook the bed.
She thought it very hard that she must lie awake and worry, while Elf could sleep; in short, she wanted some one to worry with her.
"It's like the way I climb trees when we're away in the summer," she muttered.
"It's fine climbing up, but I'm always afraid to climb down. If Bob is near, I can always make him get me down, but Bob isn't here to get me out of this mess, and Elf won't even try to keep awake to help me think."
She concluded that it was very unfeeling for Elf to be so sleepy. Her cheeks were flushed, and her head ached.
"O dear!" she whispered, softly, "Dorothy Dainty and Nancy Ferris are full of fun, but they never get into a regular fix such as I'm in now. I don't see how they manage to have such good times without ever getting mixed up in something that's hard to explain. And Betty and Valerie will get off Scot free, for 'The Fender' couldn't see them under the bed, and of course we'll not tell that they were there."
She did not know that when Betty and Valerie had reached their own room they found that in their haste to arrive at the "feast" they had left the light burning in their room!