“Why, didn’t you know I had been expelled?” She dimpled charmingly as though it were something to be proud of. “I suppose Lilla didn’t tell you because she was afraid you’d be shocked, but you might as well know all about it at the start. It saves misunderstandings. You see, we had a pajama party!”

“A pajama party!” cried the horrified father.

“Oh now, Daddy Pat! You needn’t pull a long face and make out you never did such things. You know you had jazzy times when you went to school, and you can’t be young but once. There isn’t anything so terrible in a pajama party! You see the whole trouble was I got caught out on the fire escape in mine and all the rest got away, so I had to be expelled, but it was fun. I don’t care. I’d do it all over again just to see how Guzzy Foster—that’s the math prof—looked when that ice and salt went down his back. You see it was this way. One of the girls had a box of treats from home, and she happened to tell one of the boys from the military prep that she had it, and he coaxed to get some of the things. So May Beth told him if he and some of his friends would come under the fire escape at exactly midnight she’d drop down a box of cake for them. Well, everything went all right till the party was almost over and the girls had eaten all they could stuff, and they had the box for the boys all packed and I was to go out and throw it down to them because May Beth had an awful cold and her pajamas were just thin silk and she was all of a shiver anyway from eating so much cold ice cream. So I said I didn’t mind even if it was cold. I thought it would be fun, and I went out with the box and whistled softly for the boys, and they answered once, and then it was all very still. It was moonlight, and I could see them lined up among the bushes on the campus. I swung the box over the railing and whispered, ‘Here she comes,’ and just as I did it I somehow caught my toe in the burlap that came off the ice-cream freezer—I had on Tillie Irvin’s pink satin slippers with forget-me-nots on them, and she was sore as a boil at me about that, too—and then before I knew what was happening, I somehow hit the ice-cream freezer and knocked it over, and slosh! Out went all the sloppy ice and salt water through the iron grating on the fire escape, and I looked down and there was Guzzy Foster—he and his wife have their apartment right under my room, and we thought they were away for the weekend, that’s why we chose my room for the party. He was just inside his window with his head stuck out of an old red bathrobe looking up—the old ferret. He was always snooping round to stop any fun that was going—and he caught the whole stream of icy salt water full in his face and down his old mathematical back, and I hope he gets pneumonia from it. He’s the limit! Well, I heard him gasp and splutter and draw in his head, and I heard the boys snicker down in the bushes and scatter out to the street—they got the cake all right. I called one of ‘em up on the phone at the station before I left and found out—and I just danced up and down in those pink satin slippers with the forget-me-nots and howled for a minute, it was so funny. And then all of a sudden I realized it had got very still behind me, and I looked in the window and the lights were out. There wasn’t a sound of a girl to be heard, and down the hall I could hear hard steps that sounded like Mrs. Foster, so I tried to get in the window, but it was fastened! Babe Heath did that because she thought if the window was locked they wouldn’t think to look out. But there I was in thin silk pajamas and the wind blowing up from the river like ice! It was grand skating the next day so you may know it was pretty fierce! But I stuck it out till she found me, and they expelled me so quick Lilla didn’t have a chance to come and see what was the matter. They just sent me home that night chaperoned by Guzzy Foster himself. His name’s Augustus Charles, but we call him Guzzy, and I had a horrid, horrid time, so it’s up to you to be good to me!”

Patterson Greeves gasped and grasped the arms of the big chair into which he had dropped as Athalie entered, looking at his child in abject helplessness. The distant sound of an approaching train stirred him to nervous action once more.

“I certainly cannot approve of your outrageous conduct,” he began, in a tone such as he might have used in his classroom. “It was inexcusable, impossible, indecent! I cannot think how a girl could bring herself to so demean herself. And the first thing you must do will be to write a humble acknowledgment and apology to the principal of the institution and promise that for the future your conduct shall be irreproachable. I will see at once about your reinstatement, and I cannot accept in future any disregard of the rules of the school or of the rules of good breeding.”

But the girl broke in with a boisterous laugh: “What’s that you say? Me go back to that school? Well, I guess anyhow not.