There came a downfall of silence upon the group.

When they took breath again,—­“Oh, if she’s religious!” Mattie Shannon just said, as of a thing yet farther off and more finally done with.  And then their talk waited under a restraint again.

“I supposed we were all religious,—­Sundays, at least,” broke forth Sin Saxon suddenly, who, strangely, had not spoken before.  “I don’t know, though.  Last Saturday night we danced the German till half past twelve, and we talked charades instead of going to church, till I felt—­as if I’d sat all the morning with my feet over a register, reading a novel, when I’d ought to have been doing a German exercise or something.  If she’s religious every day, she’s seven times better than we are, that’s all. I think—­she’s got a knot to her thread!”

Nobody dared send Leslie Goldthwaite quite to Coventry after this.

Sin Saxon found herself in the position of many another leader,—­obliged to make some demonstration to satisfy the aroused expectations of her followers.  Her heart was no longer thoroughly in it; but she had promised them a “howl,” and a howl they were determined upon, either with or against her.

Opportunity arose just now also.  Madam Routh went off on a party to the Notch, with some New York friends, taking with her one or two of the younger pupils, for whom she felt most constant responsibility.  The elder girls were domesticated and acquainted now at Outledge; there were several matronly ladies with whom the whole party was sufficiently associated in daily intercourse for all the air of chaperonage that might be needed; and one assistant pupil, whom, to be sure, the young ladies themselves counted as a most convenient nonentity, was left in nominal charge.

Now or never, the girls declared with one voice it must be.  All they knew about it—­the most of them—­was that it was some sort of an out-of-hours frolic, such as boarding-school ne’er-do-weels delight in; and it was to plague Miss Craydocke, against whom, by this time, they had none of them really any manner of spite; neither had they any longer the idea of forcing her to evacuate; but they had got wound up on that key at the beginning, and nobody thought of changing it.  Nobody but Sin Saxon.  She had begun, perhaps, to have a little feeling that she would change it, if she could.

Nevertheless, with such show of heartiness as she found possible, she assented to their demand, and the time was fixed.  Her merry, mischievous temperament asserted itself as she went on, until she really grew into the mood for it once more, from the pure fun of the thing.