It Was Only Midnight (Cont.)
Screen 2 of 3
When we reached the second floor of the Rock House, everything was very quiet. Since Fay and all the others up there were sound asleep, we walked softly and talked in whispered tones. After surveying the situation, Howsie said it was time to "do it," and I readily agreed.
Whereupon, we both undressed, put on our flannel pajamas and began to execute our plan. First, Howsie slipped very quietly into Fay's room, reset his clock to show the time as twenty minutes after four, and then returned to our room and got in bed.
Next, I pulled on my bathrobe, mussed up my hair to make it appear I had just arisen from a night's sleep, and went to the hall stove, where I began the noisy operation which I usually carried on at four-thirty.
In a moment or two-actually at about twelve-thirty-I heard Fay turn over, look at his clock with squinted eyes and groan. Is my clock right he asked me, still half asleep? (Fortunately for us, he had no watch to double check the time.) When I told him I supposed it was, he grudgingly turned off the alarm which was just beginning to ring, closed his window, looked out at the snow, then slowly began his morning schedule.
While I was still fooling around with the stove, I noticed over my shoulder that his shaving motions in front of the wavy bathroom mirror were slow and unsure, but he soon finished, walked back to his room in his long underwear which he always slept in, and began to put on his khaki uniform. I was barely able to control my laughter as I watched him wind, unwind, and wind again those stubborn wool leggings from ankle to knee. (At one time I was tempted to tell all and let him go back to sleep, but I didn't and he continued to get ready.) Several times during the process, he yawned and complained about being sleepy and tired, but he persisted and finished dressing. After picking up his books and turning off the light, he made his way slowly downstairs shortly before one o'clock.
Back in my room now, I heard him make some angry comment about the snow which was by then several inches deep, as he opened the back door and stepped out into the night. I then looked out my back window and caught a brief glimpse of Fay trudging up the hill through the snow.
After we had a good laugh about it all, Howsie reset Fay's alarm clock to the correct time, and I banked the fire in the stove again, just as it should be at that time of night. We both then went to sleep, feeling sure that Fay would return soon with all kinds of threats to kill us. But that's not the way things turned out--not at all.
About one-thirty, I heard the phone ring downstairs and went to the stairway to hear my mother saying something like, "yes, Fay Buchanan rooms here--why?" Then "you say you think he is drunk? Why I never heard of Fay even taking a drink, much less getting drunk."
Of course, I said nothing to my mother about what had happened. What could I say then without making the matter worse? Howsie and I never intended that she would know anything about our prank on Fay, and certainly we did not want her to be involved. But our plans were not working out very well; so we just lay quietly in our beds and waited.
In about fifteen minutes, we heard a loud knock at the downstairs back door. I went to the stairway and heard a man's voice I recognized. It was Aubrey Hoof nail, the campus policeman. I was frightened.
"This is Aubrey, Mrs. Travelstead," he announced while still outside, "and I've got with me this fellow I was telling you about who says he is Fay Buchanan and that he lives here at Rock House." My mother asked them to come in out of the blowing snow, and when she say Fay in the dim hall light, she demanded (not uncommon for her when she was intent about same thing) to know what he was doing out on the campus at that time of night.
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