Clorissa’s “someday” to tell Mimi her troublesome secret came sooner than either expected. The revelation came about unexpectedly Friday night. It was the surprise to an unplanned party.  
Study hall had not the mates. They were still excited over Mimi’s honor of being chosen cheer leader and over the campus discussion Mimi’s notes would cause.
 
Mimi tried to lie still so that Chloe could go to sleep. She could hear Sue and Betsy turning and whispering. Then Sue aloud.
 
“I am going to get up. I have a bad case of something, a cross between the heebie-jeebies and the . I’m naturally wild on Friday nights and want to celebrate.”
 
“Believe I’ll get up, too,” Mimi whispered.
 
“Let’s all get up,” Betsy said and they were all four out of bed and tiptoeing to the bathroom by the time she finished.
 
Mimi with her hands in front of her, walked slowly and slipped her feet along. She mustn’t run into a door facing with that nose.
 
Betsy for a match, checked to see that the bathroom shade was down, and then lighted a candle. Keeping the flame shaded carefully with her hands, she dripped some tallow in the bottom of the bathtub and stuck the candle in the thickening .
 
“Success!” she breathed as she withdrew her hands and the candle stood alone.
 
“What do we eat?” Sue asked. “I’m starving.”
 
“No!” Mimi teased and almost out.
 
“Sh-sh.” Betsy warned. She had been to too many such after-lights-out parties. Keeping quiet was rule one.
 
“Alas the cupboard is bare,” Mimi , as she stepped down from the side of the tub where she had climbed to search the high shelf.
 
“The treasure chest is empty, too,” Betsy .
 
“We do have some white sugar and some cocoa in the sitting room,” Chloe remembered.
 
“My kingdom, not for a horse, but for a cow! We need only butter and milk to have fudge.” Sue had them all now. “Let’s make hot chocolate—sugar, cocoa, water—not rich, but I could drink ink with sugar in it.”
 
“Far be it from me to be a kill-joy, but, we have no canned heat.” Betsy sounded hopeless. “Why did we ever bring up food at all? I was hungry but not until we talked about fudge. If we go to bed now, and there seems nothing left to do, I’ll be with visions of fudge and sugar plums dancing through my head. Oh me, oh my. My mother had such hungry children!”
 
“Fudge? Did you ask for fudge, ladies? You shall have it. I finish everything I start,” Sue’s eyes were round with excitement. “Dit’s roommate keeps canned heat all the time and I am going to borrow some.”
 
“Sue! You mean you’ll go to college hall?” Betsy asked. That meant getting safely through the intervening corridor and stepping in to the lighted halls. The chances of being caught were great.
 
“I’d walk a mile for—fudge.” Sue concluded.
 
“I’ll go with you, then,” Betsy said. “Now if we can get to the first floor-bath and luckily catch some one we know well enough, we can hide in a shower while she goes and borrows the canned heat.”
 
Betsy certainly knew her way around.
 
“If you all get caught I’ll die,” Chloe whispered after them.
 
“We won’t,” Betsy assured her. “Into the valley of death strode——” Betsy and Sue were out the door.
 
“Gee! I’ve been thinking about Daddy and Mother so much since I got hurt,” Mimi as she and Chloe on the bathroom floor in the dim light. “You’d love my Mother and Daddy. They’re keen! My Daddy is the best doctor in the world and Mother is a darling. When they visited me at camp this summer all the girls over them. Some of them who have cranky old ‘stick-in-the-mud’ parents, envied me.”
 
“I’d envy you any kind of mother and daddy—even old fogies.” Chloe’s whisper was pathetically small and lonely.
 
Mimi didn’t know what to say. She wanted to ask, “Where are your Mother and Daddy?” but somehow she couldn’t. She reached over and squeezed Chloe’s hand and continued staring ahead. Minutes passed and Mimi could not find her tongue.
 
“I believe I hear them coming back,” Chloe said. Both girls and sat up straight.
 
The door to two hundred and nine opened almost noiselessly, then clicked to. Mimi and Chloe rushed to meet Betsy and Sue.
 
“We have it!” Sue could hardly keep from shouting. “Not a whole can, but enough.”
 
“Sh—sh—” Betsy cautioned again. “We nearly got caught. Oh Gosh! Mrs. Cole, of all people, was over there. She stopped right outside the floor bath door and talked to Virginia, I thought she’d never go on. Whew!”
 
Sigh of relief all around.
 
“Now for the dirty work at the crossroads.” Betsy said. “Chloe get the dish. Sue, stuff towels against the bottom of the doors into the hall. Can’t have this larupin’ good smell out. We’d have half of Prep Hall in here, not to mention Mrs. Cole. Mimi get to stirring, we’d better cook in the tub. The light won’t show so plain.”
 
The whispered instructions were carried out silently and quickly. Five minutes after the daring visit to College Hall, sugar and water and cocoa fudge was boiling away in the chafing dish which stood in the bottom of the bathtub. Mimi was stirring away, brown bubbles. She mustn’t let it boil over, not waste a precious drop——
 
“Want a cup of water to test it?” Chloe asked.
 
“Shoot no,” Mimi answered. “I can tell by the way it boils when it’s done. When it begins to boil heavy and the bubbles spit little balls, it’s ready to beat. Can I wait or can I wait?”
 
Betsy in the meantime had greased a platter with cold cream.
 
“I really feel like I’m at boarding school now,” Mimi murmured happily as she continued stirring.
 
“You’ll know you are at boarding school if Mrs. Cole catches us and you get campused,” Betsy warned. “What a divine smell!”
 
“Look!” Chloe was pointing at the canned heat. Her face was . “It’s going out!” Slowly the blaze , up, and while the anxious girls looked on, out.
 
“There goes the old ball game,” Mimi whispered.
 
“Not for me, I’ll eat it with a spoon.” Sue declared.
 
“Never say die,” Betsy said. “It’s nearly done, I know it is. Lift it up Mimi and we’ll finish it over the candle. We mustn’t let it stop boiling. Here.”
 
“Dit has an electric perculator,” Sue volunteered. “She’s made tomato soup in it. Why not fudge?”
 
“Don’t be silly,” Chloe said.
 
“No,” agreed Mimi, “you’d better thank your lucky stars you made the last trip safely. Besides, the lights are out over there now.”
 
After ten slow passing minutes of feeble boiling over the candle, Mimi declared the candy finished. The candle was about gone, too.
 
“Pour it up, please—” Sue urged.
 
“Control yourself, Wimpy,” Mimi teased Sue.
 
After each girl beat and beat, the candy was poured up, setting as it fell, spreading in circles which heaped higher and higher to the center leaving a topknot.
 
“Dubs on licking the pan.”
 
“Go to it, but no holes in the chafing dish please,” Mimi cautioned, handing her the pan. “We might want it again, sometime.”
 
Betsy dried the nail file she had been scrubbing and while the fudge was still hot, she cut it with the file. Then spreading an oiled bread paper flat on the floor she turned the platter upside down. Slowly the fudge fell out.
 
“Let’s eat one piece apiece now and let the rest cool,” Mimi suggested.
 
“Since I licked the pan, maybe I can hold off,” Sue agreed, turning on a slow stream of water and putting the pan to soak.
 
“Knock on wood y’all, but we’ve had better luck with our first after-lights fudge party than my great Aunt Patricia and her crowd did.”
 
“What happened to them?” Chloe wanted to know.
 
“You know, my great Aunt Patricia, Pattie to her chums, came here when Sheridan was a Seminary for young ladies, I mean ladies. Did they have it easy? Needle work, china painting, French and gramma............