—­“Who down the hall is creeping now
   With stealthy step, but knowing not how
   Exactly to discover”—­

broke in Rose, improvising rapidly.  Next moment came a knock at the door.  It was Miss Jane.

“Your drawers, Miss Carr,—­your cupboard,”—­she said, going across the room and examining each in turn.  There was no fault to be found with either, so she withdrew, giving the laughing girls a suspicious glance, and remarking that it was a bad habit to sit on beds,—­it always injured them.

“Do you suppose she heard?” whispered Mary Silver.

“No, I don’t think she did,” replied Rose.  “Of course she suspected us of being in some mischief or other,—­she always does that.  Now, Mary, it’s you turn to give us an intellectual treat.  Begin.”

Poor Mary shrank back, blushing and protesting.

“You know I can’t,” she said, “I’m too stupid.”

“Rubbish!” cried Rose, “You’re the dearest girl that ever was.”  She gave Mary’s shoulder a reassuring pat.

“Mary is excused this time,” put in Katy.  “It is the first meeting, so I shall be indulgent.  But, after this, every member will be expected to contribute something for each meeting.  I mean to be very strict.”

“Oh, I never, never can!” cried Mary.  Rose was down on her at once.  “Nonsense! hush!” she said.  “Of course you can.  You shall, if I have to write it for you myself!”

“Order!” said the President, rapping on the table with a pencil.  “Rose has something to read us.”

Rose stood up with great gravity.  “I would ask for a moment’s delay, that the Society may get out its pocket-handkerchiefs,” she said.  “My piece is an affecting one.  I didn’t mean it, but it came so.  We cannot always be cheerful.”  Here she heaved a sigh, which set the S. S. U. C. to laughing, and began.

A scotch poem.

Wee, crimson-tippet Willie Wink,
Wae’s me, drear, dree, and dra,
A waeful thocht, a fearsome flea,
A wuther wind, and a’.

Sair, sair thy mither sabs her lane,
Her een, her mou, are wat;
Her cauld kail hae the corbies ta’en,
And grievously she grat.

Ah, me, the suthering of the wind! 
Ah, me, the waesom mither! 
Ah, me the bairnies left ahind,
The shither, hither, blither!

“What does it mean?” cried the girls, as Rose folded up the paper and sat down.

“Mean?” said Rose, “I’m sure I don’t know.  It’s Scotch, I tell you!  It’s the kind of thing that people read, and then they say, ’One of the loveliest gems that Burns ever wrote!’ I thought I’d see if I couldn’t do one too.  Anybody can, I find:  it’s not at all difficult.”

All the poems having been read, Katy now proposed that they should play “Word and Question.”  She and Clover were accustomed to the game at home, but to some of the others it was quite new.

Each girl was furnished with a slip of paper and a pencil, and was told to write a word at the top of the paper, fold it over, and pass it to her next left-hand neighbor.