“You will carry, each, a crash towel, a sponge, and soap,” she announced to Katy, “and will be in the entry, at the foot of the stairs, at twenty-five minutes after nine precisely.  Failures in punctuality will be punished by a mark.”  Miss Jane always delivered her words like a machine, and closed her mouth with a snap at the end of the sentence.

“Horrid thing!  Don’t I wish her missionary would come and carry her off.  Not that I blame him for staying away,” remarked Rose Red, from her door; making a face at Miss Jane, as she walked down the entry.

“I don’t understand about the bath-house,” said Katy.  “Does it belong to us?  And where is it?”

“No, it doesn’t belong to us.  It belongs to Mr. Perrit, and anybody can use it; only on Saturday it is reserved for us nuns.  Haven’t you every noticed it when we have been out walking?  It’s in that street by the bakery, which we pass to take the Lebanon road.  We go across the green, and down by Professor Seccomb’s, and we are in plain sight from the college all the way; and, of course, those abominable boys sit there with spy-glasses, and stare as hard as ever they can.  It’s perfectly horrid.  ‘A crash towel, a sponge, and soap,’ indeed!  I wish I could make Miss Jane eat the pieces of soap which she has forced me to carry across this village.”

“O Rose!” remonstrated Mary Silver.

“Well, I do.  And the crash towels afterward, by way of a dessert,” replied the incorrigible Rose.  “Never mind!  Just wait!  A bright idea strikes me!”

“Oh! what?” cried the other three; but Rose only pursed up her mouth, arched he eye-brows, and vanished into her own room, locking the door behind her.  Mary Silver, finding herself shut out, sat down meekly in the hall till such time as it should please Rose to open the door.  This was not till the bath hour.  As Katy and Clover went by, Rose put her head out, and called that she would be down in a minute.

The bathing party consisted of eight girls, with Miss Jane for escort.  They were half way across the common before Miss Jane noticed that everybody was shaking with stifled laughter, except Rose, who walked along demurely, apparently unconscious that there was any thing to laugh at.  Miss Jane looked sharply from one to another for a moment, then stopped short and exclaimed, “Rosamond Redding! how dare you?”

“What is it ma’am?” asked Rose, with the face of a lamb.

“Your bath towel! your sponge!” gasped Miss Jane.

“Yes, ma’am, I have them all,” replied the audacious Rose, putting her hand to her hat.  There, to be sure, was the long crash towel, hanging down behind like a veil, while the sponge was fastened on one side like a great cockade; and in front appeared a cake of pink soap, neatly pinned into the middle of a black velvet bow.

Miss Jane seized Rose, and removed these ornaments in a twinkling.  “We shall see what Mrs. Florence thinks of this conduct,” she grimly remarked.  Then, dropping the soap and sponge in her own pocket, she made Rose walk beside her, as if she were a criminal in custody.