"Here! Hold on!" cried Bess. "What are 'stable viands'? Oats and corn. One would think we were horses."
Just then Nan made the announcement: "Ladies, supper is served." And at that very moment, as the girls crowded to the table and Amelia began to pour the steaming drink, there came a resounding knock upon the door.
"The ghost!" gasped a number of the girls in awed chorus.
"If it is," said Nan Sherwood, vigorously, as the summons was repeated, "he is in full possession of his health and strength."
"It's something worse than a ghost," agreed Laura Polk, grabbing several sandwiches and enveloping them in the folds of her sweater. "But I vow I shall not be cheated out of all my supper."
Nobody started for the door for fully a minute, and within that time the knocking was repeated three times. It was not only an imperious rapping; it was plainly inspired by some excitement.
"My goodness!" Amelia Boggs murmured. "That ghost's in an awful hurry."
"He can't be, if he ate all that he stole before we got here," Bess declared.
Only Nan was silent. She suspected at once what the commanding summons meant. It was a teacher, perhaps Dr. Prescott herself. The party was a failure and all the girls whom she had invited would, with herself and chum, be punished for the frolic.
As she slowly approached the door, a voice from outside faintly reached her ear: "Let me in! open the door!"
Nan was astonished by this. It sounded like somebody in distress. She hurriedly turned the bolt and opened the door a little way. There was a keen wind blowing off the water and the garments of the person on the doorstep fluttered in it, so that Nan knew at once it was a woman; but she could not see her face.
"Who is it?" whispered Nan, while the other truants held their breath.
"For goodness' sake, let me in, child!" exclaimed a vexed voice and the woman pushed by, slamming the door when once she was inside. It did not need the black veil jerked up over her hat to assure the girls assembled that Mrs. Cupp was under the veil!
"Good-_night_!" murmured Laura, falling dramatically into May Winslow's arms. "'All is lost!' the captain shouted."
"Sh-h!" gasped the girl from Alabama. "Don't make her mad."
"I couldn't," declared the irrepressible. "She was born that way."