An Overnight Sensation

"Are you sure that this is a good idea?" Sister Teresa - she of the violet breeches - asked her golden-breeched colleague, Sister Maria. They were standing in the passage outside the two bedrooms, each of them holding a lit candle.

"Of course it is," Maria replied, managing to keep the volume of her voice down to quite a low level. "They'll thank us for it in the morning. You'll see."

"If they'll welcome it, why didn't we ask them first, then?"

"They'll welcome it once they see how good it looks. But if we had suggested it to them in advance, they might have felt a little uncertain about it."

Maria crept into Fred and Jarvis's room, and a minute or so later came out holding a bundle of something. Meanwhile Teresa was doing the same in the room next door.

A few hours later they returned with the bundles, went into the rooms with them, then came out empty-handed (except for their candles).

In the morning, Fred was awoken by a loud cry from one of the women next door. Alarmed, he got up and went over to where he had left his clothes, and stopped in amazement. Even in the dim light with the curtains still drawn, he could see that his breeches had been dyed a deep purple and his shirt a bright yellow. Even his boots were chestnut brown. Looking into the saddle bag where he kept his spare shirt, he found that this had not escaped the nuns' attention. He felt he could now guess what had prompted the outcry from next door.

It was an unhappy party that gathered for breakfast. Jarvis's clothes had been dyed to match Fred's. The "sisters'" breeches had been coloured in vertical stripes of purple and black, whilst their shirts had horizontal stripes of pink and cyan. Their boots were lime green.

Maria bustled into the dining room with the food for breakfast. If looks could have killed, she would have been a dead woman, but she seemed totally oblivious to the hatred directed in her direction. "There's NO need to THANK me," she boomed, smiling at them. On that they were all agreed. They ate their breakfast (still no meat) in sullen silence, and left immediately afterwards.

1. A few hours down the road...
2. Fortunately, before long they reached a small town where they were able to buy new clothing.

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