“I shall prove my case,” retorted Mavis, as she grabbed the ham paste and the tin of sardines.

Miss Striem sat down.  A giggle ran round the table.

“Can you tell me where the sitting-room is, please?” Mavis asked of the girl next to her.

“What?” replied the girl whom she had spoked to.

Mavis repeated her question.

“There’s no such thing; there’s only this place open at meal times and your bedroom.”

“Thanks; I’ll go there.  Good night.”

Mavis, carrying her ham paste and sardines, walked the evil-smelling passage and up the stairs to her room.  Once outside the supper-room, she repented of having had words with Miss Striem, who was, doubtless, a person of authority; but it was done now, and Mavis reflected how she had justice and evidence on her side.  The bedroom was empty.  Mavis placed the ham paste and sardines on her washing-stand; she then took advantage of the absence of the other girls to undress and get into bed.  She fell into a heavy slumber, which gave place to a state of dreamy wakefulness, during which she became conscious of others being in the room; of hearing herself discussed; of a sudden commotion in the apartment.  A sequence of curious noises thoroughly awoke her.  The unaccustomed sight of three other girls in the room in which she slept caused her to sit bolt upright.  The girl, Miss Impett, to whom she had already spoken, was sitting on her bed, yawning as she pulled off her stockings.  Another, a fine, queenly-looking girl, in evening dress, was sitting on a chair with her hands pressed to her stomach; her eyes were rolling as if she were in pain.  The third girl, also in evening dress, but not so handsome as the sufferer, was whispering consoling words.

“Is she ill?” asked Mavis.

“It’s the indigestion,” replied the last girl Mavis had noticed.

“Can I do anything?” asked Mavis.

“She always has it dreadful when she goes out to supper; now she’s paying for it and—­” She got no further; her friend was seized with another attack; all her attention was devoted to rubbing the patient’s stomach, the while the latter groaned loudly.  It was a similar noise which had awakened Mavis.

“I suppose we shan’t get to sleep for an hour,” yawned Miss Impett, as she struggled into a not too clean nightdress.

“Oh, you cat, you!” gasped the sufferer.

“It’s your own fault,” retorted Miss Impett.  “You always over-eat yourself and drink such a lot of that filthy creme de menthe.”

“Don’t you wish you had the chance?” snapped the girl who was attending her friend.

“I always drink Kummel; it’s much more ladylike,” remarked Miss Impett.

“You’d drink anything you can bally well get,” the sufferer cried at a moment when she was free of pain.

“I am a lady.  I know how to be’ave when a gentleman offers me a drink,” retorted Miss Impett.