"If you wanted twenty-five dollars and I had it," said Betty persuasively, "I'd give it to you without asking a solitary question."
Rob's lips twitched.
"But, Betty—" he began. Then—"Oh, do play fair," he urged. "You're younger than I am. Uncle Dick expects me to look after you. Goodness knows I don't want to pry into your affairs, but when you borrow fifteen dollars and then want twenty-five the same week, what's a fellow to think? If some one is borrowing from you, it's time to call a halt; you're not fair to yourself."
Betty looked startled. How could Bob possibly guess so near the truth? She began to think that the better part of wisdom was to confide in this keen young man.
"Come on, Betty, tell me what you want it for, and you shall have twice twenty-five," said Bob earnestly. "I've most of my allowance in the school bank. It's all yours, if you'll let me have an inkling of the reason you need money."
"Well," said Betty, slowly, "I didn't promise I wouldn't tell—only that I wouldn't tell Bobby or Mrs. Eustice. It's Libbie who has to have the money."
She sketched Libbie's story for him rapidly, Bob listening in silence. At the end he asked a single question.
"Have you any of those notes asking for money?"
"Here's one." Betty thrust her hand into the pocket of her sweater and pulled out the crumpled paper that Libbie had shaken out of the bottle that morning.
"Were they all written on this same kind of paper?" asked Bob, reading the note.
"Ye-s, that is, I think so," hesitated Betty. "I really haven't noticed. Why?"
"Because I don't think any man wrote this," announced Bob confidently. "I think some girl at school has done it, either as a joke or to torment Libbie."
"But it's grown-up writing," protested Betty. "Though, come to think of it, we don't know any of the girls' handwriting," she added thoughtfully.
"What girl would be likely to do it?" asked Bob. "Can you recall a practical joker? This is copy book paper torn from an ordinary theme book. Yes, I'll bet a cookie a girl wrote it."
"Ada Nansen or Ruth Gladys Royal might do it to plague Libbie," said Betty slowly. "They don't like any of our crowd, and Libbie is so good at French she turns Ada green with envy. The more I think of it, the surer I am it is Ada. Ruth doesn't dislike any one actively enough to exert herself."
"Ada Nansen?" repeated Bob. "Isn't she that girl we saw on the train and who plumped herself down in my seat? I thought so—I remember you told me. Well, from the sidelight I have on her character, I believe she is the one at the bottom of this. That will explain, too, why you never catch any one digging up the bottle—she knows exactly when you are busy and when you are not."
"Bottle!" said Betty explosively, to Bob's amazement. "Oh, Bob! this morning Miss Jessup was talking to us about association of ideas, and she asked Ada what bee meant to her. We thought she'd say 'honey,' of course, but she said 'bottle.' Doesn't that show—"
"I should say it did!" Bob's voice was eager. "She took it for the letter 'B' and bottle was in her mind. You may depend upon it, that girl is at the back of all this fuss! Gee, when I've nothing else to do, I'm going to study up on this association of ideas stuff."
"You don't need it—you can get at things without a bit of trouble,"Betty assured him affectionately.
"How will you go about pinning down Ada?" Bob asked anxiously.
"I'll cut out Latin to-morrow afternoon when she has a study period," planned Betty. "She'll think Libbie is reciting, and she'll not think of me at all, and I'll slip out and watch to see if she goes near the bottle. But what can I do if she does prove to be the right one? She'll tell Mrs. Eustice, and poor Libbie will be in a peck of trouble. I really think Mrs. Eustice would send her home if she knew."
"And serve Libbie right for being such an idiot!" pronounced Bob severely. "However, I think she has been pretty thoroughly punished through fear. I only wish you'd told me this before, Betty, because I know exactly how you can deal with Ada."
"You do? Oh, Bob, what should I ever do without you!" cried Betty, forgetting that a few moments before she had berated him for his insistence. "Tell me, quick."
"Well, a crowd of us fellows happened to be over in Edentown last Friday night, and we saw Ada and Ruth at the movies," said Bob. "They didn't see us, for we sat back. They were the only girls from Shadyside, and Tommy and I decided they had sneaked out after dinner and walked all that distance. Now threatening isn't a very nice performance, Betty, but sometimes you have to meet like with like. I think, if when you see Ada digging up the bottle, you go to her and say that unless she returns the money and Libbie's first note to you and promises to let the matter drop—forever—you will expose her Edentown trip to Mrs. Eustice, she will listen to reason."
"So do I," agreed Betty. "I don't think she has touched the money—she has plenty. But I must have the note so that Libbie can destroy it. Mrs. Eustice never lets us go to town at night, and I'm sure Ada and Ruth had to go down the fire-escape. Goodness, didn't they take a chance of being discovered!"
"Well, as I've already missed half an algebra recitation, and you know you have no business over here at this time of day, I move we begin our penance," suggested Bob. "Paddle home, Betsey, and if our hunch turns out wrong, we'll tackle another one."
"Oh, it won't—I'm sure you're right," said Betty gratefully. "Thank you ever so much, Bob. And the next time I'll tell you everything at the very first."
"Don't let me hear of another time," Bob called after her, with mock severity.
"Well, I never!" gasped Libbie, astonished, when Betty told her of Bob's suspicions. "Oh, Betty, wouldn't it be wonderful if it should be true!"
"I'm going to cut Latin this afternoon and find out," said Betty vigorously. "If Miss Sharpe asks for me, you don't know where I am; she never does anything but give you double lines to translate."
Betty knew that Ada had a study period, which she usually spent in her room, directly after lunch.
Directly after she left the dining room that noon Betty sped away to the foot of the hill. There were several stubby bushes about half-filled with wind-blown leaves and old rubbish and affording an excellent screen. Betty crouched down behind one of these.
She had not long to wait. Ada, in her beautiful mink furs, which she clung to persistently, though the fall weather so far had been very mild, was presently seen coming across the grass. She walked straight to the spot where the bottle was buried, and, stooping down, brushed away the leaves and dirt. She lifted the bottle.
"Pshaw, it's empty!" she said aloud.
"Yes, it's empty," echoed Betty, stepping out from behind the bush. "And you are to give the money back to me, and Libbie's note with it."
"Is that so?" said Ada contemptuously. "I have something to say about that. I intend to see that that note reaches the proper person—Mrs. Eustice."
Betty took a step nearer, her dark eyes blazing.
"I can play the kind of game you play—if I must," she said in a curiously repressed tone. "What about the trip you and Ruth Gladys made to Edentown last Friday night?"
Ada glared at her.
"Were you there? How did you know?" she stammered jerkily. "If you were up to the same trick, you'll look nice tattle-telling on us, won't you?"
"I wasn't there, but I have witnesses whom I can summon to say you were," declared Betty, wishing her voice did not tremble with nervousness. "You were the only girls from Shadyside, and you must have climbed down the fire—"
Ada raised her hand that held the bottle.
"You—you tell-tale!" she screamed threateningly.
Betty flung up her arm to knock the bottle aside, missed Ada's hand and hit her shoulder. Ada went down, Betty on top of her.
"Girls! For mercy's sake!" Miss Anderson stood beside them, scandalized. "Betty, get up. Ada, what are you thinking of? I saw you from the gym windows. You'll have the whole school out here presently. Betty, I thought you had Latin at this period?"
"I have," admitted Betty, so meekly that Miss Anderson looked away lest she laugh. "Only I had to see Ada."
"I don't know what you were quarreling about," said Miss Anderson, with characteristic frankness. "But I do know that both of you are old enough to know better than to revert to small-boy tactics. You've a hole in your stocking, Betty, that would do credit to a little brother."
"I ripped it on that stone," said Betty regretfully.
Ada stood sullenly, unconscious of two dead leaves hanging to her hat which completely destroyed her usual effect of studied elegance.
"Go on in, Betty," said the physical culture teacher, who labored under no delusions about the duties of a peacemaker. To tell the truth, she did not believe in forced reconciliation. "Ada will come with me."
"Ada has something I want," said Betty stubbornly. "She has to promise to give it to me first."
Ada looked at the resolute little figure facing her. Betty, she knew, was capable of doing exactly what she had said. Mrs. Eustice had no more rigid rule than the one against going to town, day or night, without permission. Ada gave in.
"I'll leave it in your room before dinner—you didn't think I carried it with me, did you?" she snapped.
"Both?" said Betty significantly, meaning the note and the money.
"Everything!" cried the exasperated Ada, on the verge of angry tears.
"Then you have my promise never to say a word," Betty assured her blithely.
"Do you want this bottle?" Miss Anderson called after her, as she started for the school.
Miss Anderson had been studying both girls as she waited quietly.
Now Betty turned, smiled radiantly, and took the bottle the teacher held out to her. With careful aim, worthy of Bob's training, she fixed her eye on a handy rock, hurled the bottle with all her strength, and had the satisfaction of seeing it dashed into a thousand fragments as it struck the target squarely.
Then she trotted sedately on to her delayed recitation, and Miss Anderson and the scowling Ada followed more slowly.
Just before dinner that night there came a knock on Betty's door, and Virgie Smith, one of Ada's friends, thrust a package at Bobby, who had answered the tap.
Betty managed to turn aside her chum's curiosity and to get away to Libbie and give her the note. They burned it in the flame of a candle, and counted the money. It was all there, folded just as Libbie had placed it in the bottle. Evidently Ada had never carried it.
Libbie paid Louise the money she had borrowed of her and gave Betty the amount she owed her, most of which was Bob's.
"Now do try to be more sensible, Libbie," pleaded Betty, turning to go back to Bobby. "When you want to do something romantic think twice and count a hundred."
"I will!" promised Libbie fervently. "I'll never be so silly again, Betty."
But dear me, she was, a hundred times! But in a different way each time.Libbie would be Libbie to the end of the chapter.
Betty, rushing back to brush her hair for dinner, heard a sound suspiciously like a sob as she passed Norma Guerin's door. It was unlatched, and as no one answered when she tapped Betty gently pushed it open and stepped into the room.
Norma lay on her bed crying as though her heart would break, and Alice, looking very forlorn and solemn, was holding a letter in her hand.
"My patience, what a world of trouble this is!" sighed Betty to herself, but aloud she said cheerily: "What's the matter with Norma?"
Norma sat up, mopping her eyes.
"Oh, Betty," she choked, "I don't believe Alice and I can come back after Christmas! They've had a fire in Glenside and a house dad owns there burned. He hasn't a cent of insurance, and the mortgagee takes the ground. So that's the rental right out of our income. Besides, grandma has had an operation on her eyes and she has to spend weeks in an expensive Philadelphia hospital. Even with the small fees the surgeons charge because of dad, the board will amount to more than he can afford to pay. Alice and I ought to be learning stenography or something useful."
"Well, now, your father would say," suggested Betty, with determined optimism, "that the Christmas vacation is too far off to make any plans about what you're going to do afterward. You know Bobby Littell has set her heart on you and Alice spending the recess with them in Washington. Anyway, lots of things can turn up before Christmas, Norma—even the treasure!"
Norma tried to smile.
"I dream about that chasm nearly every night," she said. "Sometimes I think the Indians came back and got the stuff, Betty. They're so clever about climbing, and I know they wouldn't easily give up."
"Nonsense!" chided Betty. "The treasure is there, and we've just got to think up a way to get it out. At all costs you mustn't cry yourself sick about the future—you'll spoil all the fun awaiting you in the weeks before Christmas. And you know you can't study as well when you're depressed, and, goodness knows! one has to study at Shadyside."
"I've a headache now," confessed Norma, pushing her tumbled hair out of her eyes. "I can't go down to dinner—I'm a perfect sight. There's the bell!"
"Just lie down and try to rest," advised Betty, smoothing the tangled covers with a deft hand. "I'll bring you up some supper on a tray. Aunt Nancy thinks you're an angel on general principles, and she has a special soft spot in her heart for you because her mother used to cook for your grandmother. Come on, Alice, we'll turn the light out and let her rest her eyes."
"I do wish some one would think up a way to get those pearls and the gold," fretted Betty, turning restlessly on her pillow that night. "If Norma and Alice are ever going to be well-off now is the time. When they're so old they can't walk, money won't do 'em any good!"
Which showed that Betty, for all her sound sense, was still a little girl. Very old ladies, who can not walk, certainly need money to make them comfortable and keep them so.
The next night was Friday, and Betty welcomed the prospect of the second degree necessary to stamp the freshmen as full-fledged members of the Mysterious For. The week had been noticeably tinged with indigo for at least two of Betty's friends, and she hoped the initiation might take their minds from their troubles.
The second degree, it was whispered about among the girls, was bound to be a "hummer."
"They say it's a test of your character," said Bobby, with a shiver. "Somehow, Betty, my character oozes out of my shoes when it knows it should be prancing up to the firing line."
"I guess you imagine that," smiled Betty. "Speak sternly to it, Bobby, and explain that funking is out of the question."
However, more girls than Bobby found it necessary to clutch at their oozing courage when, upon assembling in the large hall, the lights suddenly went out. In the shadows, four white veiled figures were seen slowly to mount the platform.
"To-night," said one of them, stretching out a long arm and pointing toward the fascinated and expectant audience, "we are your fates! You have come to the final tests. We have no choice in these tests, nor have you. You are to come forward, one at a time, and take a slip from this basket here on the table. Go directly to your room after drawing your slip, and there open it and follow the directions explicitly. Come to the platform in the order in which you are seated, please."
The lights did not come on, and one by one the girls stumbled up the steps to the platform, felt around in the basket, and drew a slip. Then they hurried away to their rooms to see what was to happen next.
Bobby and Betty could hardly wait to open their notes, and before they had them fairly digested, Frances and Libbie and Constance and Louise and the Guerin girls were crowding in to compare notes.
"I have to go and ask Miss Prettyman if I may telephone to Salsette Academy and ask for a lost-and-found notice on their bulletin board," wailed Bobby. "I'm supposed to have lost a pair of gloves at the last football game. I always have the worst luck! Can't you imagine how Miss Prettyman will lecture me? She'll say that at my age I ought to have something in my head besides excuses to talk to the boys!"
The girls laughed, recognizing the ring of prophecy in Bobby's speech.
"That's nothing—I'm to row Dora Estabrooke twice around the lake," mourned Louise. "She weighs two hundred, if she weighs a pound. Thank goodness, I don't have to do it to-night."
Norma was instructed to walk three times around the cellar, chanting "Little Boy Blue" before ten o'clock that night. Frances Martin, to her horror, was enjoined to produce six live angle worms the following morning—"and you know I despise the wiggling things," she wailed. Alice Guerin, the silent member of the octette, was condemned to recite "The Children's Hour" in the dining room "between cereal and eggs." And Constance Howard was told she must add up an unbelievably long column of figures and present the correct answer within half an hour. Constance'sbête noirwas figures, and already these long columns danced dizzily before her eyes.
"You needn't tell me that chance made such canny selections," observedBetty. "One of those girls manipulated the right notes into our hands.Libbie, what does yours say?"
Libbie handed her slip of paper to Betty without a word.
"Go to bed at once," the latter read aloud.
There was a gale of laughter. Libbie, the curious, who dearly loved to hear and see, to be sent off to bed in the middle of the most wildly exciting night they had known in weeks!
"Hurry," admonished Bobby. "You're disobeying by staying up this long.Where's your character, Libbie?"
Libbie scowled, but departed, grumbling that she didn't see why she couldn't stay up and watch Norma walk down in the cellar.
"Mine is the most spooky," said Betty, when the door had closed behind Libbie. "Listen—I'm to climb the water tower at midnight and leave this card there to show I have complied."
She held out a little plain white card in a green envelope.
"Hark! was that somebody at the door?" asked Bobby, and she ran over to it lightly and jerked it open.
The corridor was empty.
"We're all nervous," remarked Betty lightly. "I'll set the alarm for eleven-forty-five and put the clock under my pillow so Miss Lacey won't hear it. I'll lie down all dressed, and then I won't have to use a light. She might see that through the transom."
"Don't you want some of us to go with you?" asked Constance. "We needn't go up into the tower, if you say not. But at least we could go that far with you; you might fall off the roof."
"No, please, I'd rather go alone," said Betty firmly. "It's a test, you see, and the idea isn't to make it easy. I'll be all right, and in the morning the girls will find the card and know I didn't flunk."
After the girls had gone away to their own rooms the clock was set for a quarter of twelve, but Betty and Bobby decided that they might as well stay awake till midnight. They would lie down on their beds—Betty insisted that Bobby should undress and go to bed "right"—and wait for the time to come. Within twenty minutes they were both sound asleep.
The muffled whir of her alarm clock awakened Betty. For a moment she was dazed, then recollection cleared her mind. She slipped to the floor without waking Bobby and softly tiptoed from the room.
A dim light burned in the corridor, and Betty knew the way to the water tower. To reach it, one had to mount to the roof of the dormitory building. Betty experienced a little difficulty with the obstinate catch of the scuttle cover, but she finally mastered it and stepped out on the tarred graveled roof. The water tower, a huge tank on an iron framework, had a little enclosed room built directly under it reached by an iron ladder. Here the engineer kept various plumbing tools. It was in this room that Betty was to leave the card.
The night wind blew damp and keen, and the stars overhead seemed very far away. Betty had no sense of fear as she began to climb, mounting slowly and feeling for each step with her hands. The friendly dark shut in around her and somewhere in the distance a train whistle tooted shrilly.
She knew she had reached the last step when her hands encountered wood, and she felt about till she touched the knob of the door. It opened at her touch and she pulled herself in over the sill.
"Now the card," she whispered, feeling in her pocket.
A gust of wind fanned her cheek and something clicked.
The door had blown shut!
There are pleasanter places to be at midnight than the dark room of a strange water tower, but Betty was not frightened. She tripped over some tool as she felt for the door and discovered that she had lost her sense of direction completely.
"I'm all turned around," was the way she expressed it. "I must start and go around the sides, feeling till I come to the door."
Following this plan, she did come to the door and confidently turned the knob. The door stuck and she rattled the knob sharply. Then the explanation dawned on her.
The door was locked!
Could it have a spring lock? she wondered. Then she remembered a day when, on exploration bent, a group of girls had made the trip to the roof and the kindly Dave McGuire had taken a key from his pocket and unlocked the door of the little room for the more adventurous ones who wanted to climb up and see the inside.
"It was a flat key, like a latch key," Betty reflected. "The girls must have had the door unlocked for me to-night, but I don't think they would follow me and lock it. That would be mean!"
However, the door was locked and she was a prisoner. It was inky black and at every step she seemed to knock over something or stumble against cold iron. Gradually her eyes became accustomed to the lack of light, and she made out the outlines of something against the wall.
"Why, there is a window—I remember!" she said aloud. "I wonder if I can reach it."
Cautiously she felt her way around and stretched up tentative fingers.She could barely touch the lower frame.
Then, for the first time, Betty felt a little shiver of fear and apprehension. It was close in the tower room, and the smell of oil and dead air began to be oppressive. She had no wish to shout, even if she could be heard, a doubtful probability, for she had no mind to be rescued before the curious eyes of the entire school.
"I'll get out of it somehow, if I have to stay here all night," she told herself pluckily. "Oh, my goodness, what was that?"
A tiny sawing noise in one corner of the room sent Betty scurrying to the other side. She would have indignantly denied any fear of mice or rats, but the bravest girl might be excused from a too close acquaintance thrust upon her in the dark. Betty had no wish to put her fingers on a mouse.
"How can I get out?" she cried aloud, a little wildly. "I can't breathe!"
In the uncanny silence that followed the sound of her voice, the sawing noise sounded regularly, rhythmically. In desperation Betty seized an iron crowbar she had backed into on the wall, and hurled it in the direction of the industrious rodents.
"Now I've done it," she admitted, as with a clatter and a bang that, she was sure, could be heard a mile away, an evident avalanche of tools tumbled to the floor. Her crowbar had struck a box of tools.
But the silence shut down again after that. Betty did not realize that the water tower was so isolated that even unusual noises inside it would not carry far, and with the door and the window both closed the room was practically sealed.
The sawing noise was not repeated, there was that much to be grateful for, Betty reflected. She wondered if she could batter down the door.
"I'll try, anyway," she thought wearily.
And then she could not find the crowbar! Around and around she went, feeling on the floor for the tools that had clattered down with such a racket and for the iron bar she had hurled among them. Not one tool could she put her hands on.
"I must be going crazy," she cried in despair. "I couldn't have dreamed those tools fell down, and yet where could they have gone? There's no hole in the floor—"
Now Betty's nerves were sorely tried by the lonely imprisonment, the bad air, the heat, and the darkness, and it is not to be wondered at that her usual sound common sense was tricked by her imagination. Her fancy suggested that the weight of the tools might have torn a hole in the floor, they might have dropped through to the roof, and Betty herself might be in momentary danger of stepping into this hole.
Nonsense? Well, wiser minds have conceived wilder possibilities under similar trying conditions.
"I won't walk another step!" cried poor Betty, as she visioned this yawning hole. "Not another step. I'll wait till it's light."
But she waited, fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes, and the darkness if anything grew blacker. She had no idea how long she had been locked in the room, and she could not calculate how far off the morning might be.
"I'll put my hands out before me and creep," she said finally. "That ought to be safe. Perhaps I can find something to stand on to reach that window. I guess I could drop to the roof from there."
Stiffly and painfully, she began to crawl, holding out her hands before her and starting back time and again as she fancied she felt an opening just ahead. But when she brought up against a step ladder she forgot her fears in the joy of her discovery.
It was a short ladder, but she dragged it over to the window and put it in place and mounted it, all in the twinkling of an eye. By stretching to her full height, she was able to raise the creaky window, but to her dismay the roof offered a very long drop. She had not realized how high she had climbed.
"Dave was fussing with ropes and buckets the other day," she recalled. "Now I wonder—wouldn't it be the best luck in the world if I could find a rope?"
Hope was singing high in her heart now, but she almost despaired of such good fortune after a diligent search. Then something told her to feel about again on the floor. Round and round she went, getting her fingers into spider webs and sticky substances that renewed her inward shudders because she could not identify them. And when she found the rope, a tarry coil, she also solved the mystery of the tools. They had fallen down behind the coil of rope and were effectively fenced off from the circle of floor explored by the bewildered Betty.
It was the work of a moment to tie one end of the rope to a heavy staple driven under the window sill, and then, closing her eyes to the pitch black void beneath her, Betty let herself slide down to the roof. Her hands were cruelly scratched by the rope fibres and she was too tired to care about the evidences of her flight.
"If anybody wants to know about that rope and the locked door, let 'em!" she sighed defiantly.
Bobby woke up as Betty came in the door, and then there were questions galore to be answered. Betty was covered with dust and her clothing was torn and rumpled. Bobby declared she looked as if she had been to war.
"I feel it," admitted Betty. "Let me take a hot bath and get into bed. And, Bobby, promise me on your word of honor that you'll call me in the morning. Whoever locked me in expects me to stay there till I'm missed, and I want to walk into breakfast as usual."
She half regretted her instructions when Bobby called her at seven the next morning, but Betty was nothing if not gritty, and she sleepily struggled into her clothes. Ada Nansen's look of utter astonishment when she saw Betty come into the dining room with the rest for breakfast told those in the secret what they had already suspected.
"Bobby must have heard her listening at our door last night," said Betty. "What am I going to do? Why nothing, of course! That was part of the stunt, or at least I'm going to consider it so. My card is there, so they'll know I fulfilled my part."
Dave McGuire scratched his head when he found the rope and the open window, but he wisely said nothing. He had two keys, and one he had loaned at the request of the senior class president to a fellow student. The other key, for emergency use, hung on a nail in the fourth story hall. That was the key Dave found in the door lock when he made his early morning tour of inspection. "But the young folks must be having their fun," he said indulgently, "and, short of burning down the place, 'tis not Dave McGuire who will be interfering with 'em."
Mid-term tests were approaching. Bobby, who, with all her love of fun, was a hard student, felt prepared and went around serenely. Constance Howard had, most humanly, neglected, so far as the teacher of mathematics permitted, the study that was hardest for her, her algebra. She now spent hours in "cramming" on this, meanwhile complaining to those of her special chums who would listen to her of "the unfairness of being made to study algebra."
"I can add—with the use of my fingers—and subtract and divide and multiply—at least I know the tables up through the twelves. Of what use will a's and b's and x's, y's and z's ever be to me?"
"Constance, you know that's nonsense," Bobby told her. "We're every one of us here because we want to play a bigger part in life than the two-plus-two-is-four people, and we've got to dig in and prepare ourselves. If you'd do your work when you ought to, you wouldn't be in such an upset state now."
"Yes'm," grinned Constance, and went back to her belated work.
Betty had found that her year away from school had made it hard for her to concentrate her mind on her studies, and while she had not deliberately neglected her work, as Constance had in her algebra, she had not always kept up to the highest pitch. She was working furiously now, with the tests to face so soon, and with it went the resolve to be more studious from day to day during the rest of the school year. The concentration was becoming easier, too, as the term advanced, and, the teaching at Shadyside being of the best, she felt sure she would feel that she had accomplished something by the end of the year.
The Dramatic Club of Shadyside woke to ambition as the term progressed. Soon after the mid-term tests, which all the girls, even Constance, passed successfully, by dint of threat and bribery, each student was "tried out" and her ability duly catalogued.
Betty liked to act, and proved to have a natural talent, while Bobby, professing a great love for things theatrical, was hopeless on the stage. Her efforts either moved her coaches to helpless laughter or caused them to retire in indignant tears.
"She is—what you call it?—impossible!" sighed Madame, the French teacher, shaking her head after witnessing one rehearsal in which Bobby, as the villain, had convulsed the actors as well as the student audience.
"Well then, I'll be a stage hand," declared Bobby, whose feelings were impervious to slights. "I'm going to have something to do with this play!"
Ada Nansen was eager to be assigned a part—the players were chosen on merit—and she aspired modestly to the leading rôle, mainly because, the girls hinted, the heroine wore a red velvet dress with a train and a string of pearls.
But Ada, it developed, was worse than Bobby as an actress. She was self-conscious, impatient of correction, and so arrogant toward the other players that even gentle Alice Guerin was roused to retort.
"I haven't been assigned the maid's part yet!" she flashed, when Ada ordered her to remove several stage properties that were in the way.
"Give it to her, Alice!" encouraged the mischievous Bobby. "That girl would ruffle an angel."
Alice and Norma were both valuable additions to the Dramatic Club ranks. Norma especially proved to be a find, and she was given the hero's part after the first rehearsal while Alice was the heroine's mother. Betty, much to her surprise, was posted on the bulletin board as the "leading lady."
Down toward the end of the list of the cast was Ada Nansen's name as "the maid."
"She'll be furious," whispered Bobby. "Miss Anderson told Miss Sharpe, when she didn't think I could hear, that Ada wasn't really good enough to be the maid, but that they hoped she would sing for them between the acts. Miss Anderson said if they didn't let her have some part she'd be so sulky she wouldn't sing."
A rehearsal was held in the gymnasium after school that afternoon, and as she went through her first act Betty was uncomfortably conscious of Ada's glowering eyes following her. When the cue was given for the maid, Ada did not move.
"That's your cue, Ada," called Miss Anderson patiently.
"I've resigned, Miss Anderson," said Ada clearly. "It's a little too much to ask me to play maid to two charity students."
Norma and Alice shrank back, but Betty sprang forward.
"How dare you!" she flared, white with rage. "How dare you say such a thing! It's untrue, and you know it. Even if it were so, you have no right to say such an outrageous thing."
Betty was angrier than she had ever been in her life. She possessed a lively temper and was no meeker than she should be, but during the past summer she had learned to control herself fairly well. Ada's cruel taunt, directed with such a sneer at the Guerin sisters that every girl knew whom she meant, had sent Betty's temper to the boiling point.
"Easy, easy, Betty," counseled Miss Anderson, putting an arm about the shaking girl. "You're not mending matters, you know."
Then she turned to Ada, who was now rather frightened at what she had done. She had not meant to go so far.
"Ada," said Miss Anderson sharply, "you will apologize immediately before these girls for the injustice you have done to two of them. What you have just said is nothing more nor less than a lie. I will not stoop to put my meaning in gentler phrases. Apologize to Norma and Alice at once."
Ada set her lips obstinately. The teacher waited a moment.
"I will give you just three minutes," she declared. "If at the end of that time you still refuse to obey me, I will send for Mrs. Eustice."
Ada shuffled her feet uneasily. She had no fancy to meet Mrs. Eustice, whose friendship for the Guerins was well known. Mrs. Eustice had a hot white anger of her own that a pupil who once witnessed it could never forget.
"Well, Ada?" came Miss Anderson's voice at the end of the three minutes.
Ada hastily stumbled through a shame-faced apology, painful to listen to, and then, the angry tears running down her face, turned and dashed from the room.
"Ready, Betty," said Miss Anderson briskly. "You enter at the left and begin 'I thought I heard voices—' Don't look toward the auditorium. Remember you are supposed to be in a small room."
Betty managed to command her voice, and the rehearsal went on. Miss Anderson herself took the part of the maid and, as she had foreseen, by the time they had finished the hour they were in a normal, happy frame of mind.
No reference was ever made by any one to Ada's speech, but she never appeared at another rehearsal. After two weeks' diligent practice, the players were pronounced perfect and a night was set for the performance of "The Violet Patchwork."
"Why don't we go to the woods and get some leaves to trim the assembly hall?" suggested Betty two days before the time for the play. "Mrs. Eustice's sister is coming to see her, and some other guests, and we want it to look nice. We might get some nuts, too. Aunt Nancy promised us nut cake with ice cream if we'll get her enough."
"All right, I like to go nutting," agreed Bobby. "But, for goodness' sake, if we're going to walk a hundred miles this time, let's have something to eat with us. Sandwiches and a regular spread. How many have boxes from home?"
A canvass showed that a round dozen of the girls had been favored that week, and, at Bobby's suggestion, they donated their goodies to "the common cause."
"Not all the girls will want to go," said Betty. "Some are such poor walkers, they'll decline at the first hint of a hike. Every one in the V.P. will want to go, I think, and that's eleven. Then, counting the girls with boxes and the others who have asked to come, we'll have twenty. Twenty of us ought to manage to bring home enough leaves to trim the hall respectably."
"We might ask for a holiday!" Bobby's face beamed at the thought. "We haven't had a day off in weeks, and Mrs. Eustice said a long time ago she thought we'd earned one. Will you do the asking, Betty?"
Betty was accustomed to "doing the asking," and she said she would once more if Norma Guerin would go with her. Wherever possible, Betty drew Norma into every school activity, and she persistently refused to allow her friend to talk as though the Christmas holidays would end their days at Shadyside. Alice worried less than Norma, but both girls grieved at the thought of the sacrifice those at home were making for them and felt that they could not accept it much longer without vigorous protest.
Betty and Bobby, on the other hand, were determined to see to it that the sisters spent their holidays in Washington, and while Bobby cherished wild plans of filling a trunk with new dresses and hats and forcing it in some manner upon her chums, Betty concentrated her attention on the subject of cash. She intended to consult her uncle, in person if possible, and if that proved impossible, by letter, and Bob as to the feasibility of persuading Norma and Alice to borrow a sum sufficient to see them through to graduation day at Shadyside. Betty was sure her uncle and Bob, in both of whom she had infinite faith, could manage this difficult task satisfactorily, though the Guerin pride was a formidable obstacle.
Acting immediately on the decision to ask for a holiday, Betty and Norma went down to the office and preferred their request, which was cordially granted after an explanation of its purpose.
"All day to-morrow off!" shouted Betty, bursting in upon the six girls assembled to hear the result.
"We may go after breakfast and needn't come back till four o'clock whenMiss Anderson has called a dress rehearsal," chimed in Norma.
Libbie and Louise were dispatched to notify the other girls and to give strict instructions to those who had boxes not to eat any more of the contents.
"Elsie Taylor had already eaten six eclairs when I requisitioned her box for the picnic," said Constance Howard. "It's lucky we're going tomorrow, or there wouldn't be much left to eat."
Betty and Bobby each had a box from Mrs. Littell, who sent packages of sensible goodies regularly to her girls in turn.
"I hope the sandwiches will keep fresh enough," worried Betty.
But she might have saved her worry.
Just as she and Bobby were going to bed that night Norma and Alice came in, wrapped in their kimonos, each carrying a large box under her arm.
"What do you suppose?" asked Norma. "Good old Aunt Nancy heard we were going after nuts for her cake and leaves for the hall, and she's made us dozens of sandwiches. She said she did it because Mrs. Eustice reserved one of the best seats for her at the play. Anyway, we'll be glad to have them, shan't we? And, oh yes, Aunt Nancy says she'll make us a cake as big as 'a black walnut tree' and two kinds of ice cream!"
"And she brought the sandwiches up to Norma and Alice because she was determined they should have something for the picnic," thought Betty after the girls had gone. "Talk about tact! Aunt Nancy has the real thing."
The girls were all up early the next morning, and soon after breakfast they were on their way to the woods. Many of those who were not of the nutting party went to Edentown, some took canoes and went paddling, others "puttered" around the school grounds, enjoying the beautiful autumn weather and the luxury of a holiday.
Ada Nansen and her friends had elected to go to Edentown, and passed the nutting party on the way. Betty took one glance into the bus and then looked at Bobby. That young person promptly giggled.
"Did you see what I saw?" she asked.
"Poor Ada!" said Betty. "She does have troubles of her own!"
For of all the teachers, Miss Prettyman alone had been available as chaperone, and to go to town under Miss Prettyman's eagle eye was anything but an exciting experience. She was usually bent on "improving" the minds of her charges, and she improved them with serene disregard of the victims' tastes and interests. Betty and Bobby had seen her sitting bolt upright in the bus, reading a thin volume of essays while Ada scowled at the happy crowd tramping in the road.
The woods reached, they separated, some to gather branches of leaves and others intent on filling their sacks with nuts. The boxes of lunch were neatly piled under a tree, and sweaters were left with them, for it was comfortably warm even in the shadiest spots.
"I don't believe we will have many more days like this," remarked Frances Martin, her nearsighted eyes peering into a hollow tree stump. "Girls, what have I found—a squirrel?"
"Plain owl," laughed Betty. "Isn't he cunning?"
They crowded around to admire the funny little creature, and then, admonished by Bobby, whom Constance declared would make a good drill sergeant, set busily to work again. Nuts were not plentiful, but they filled half a sack, and then, a large pile of flaming branches having been gathered, they decided to drag their spoils back to the tree and to have lunch.
"Girls, girls, girls!" shrieked Libbie, who was in the lead, "our lunch is gone—every crumb of it!"
Sure enough, the sweaters were all tossed about in confusion and the boxes had disappeared.
"Who took it?" demanded Bobby wrathfully. "You needn't tell me that lunch walked off!"
High and clear and shrill, a familiar whistle sounded back of them.
"That's Bob!" Betty's face brightened. "Listen!"
She gave an answering whistle, and Bob's sounded again.
There was a scrambling among the bushes, and a group of cadets burst through. Bob and the Tucker twins were first, and after them came Gilbert Lane and Timothy Derby and Winifred Marion Brown.
"Hello, anything the matter?" was Bob's greeting. "You look rather glum."
"So would you," Betty informed him, "if you were starving after a morning's work and your lunch was stolen."
"Gee, that is tough!" exclaimed Bob sympathetically. "Who stole it?"
"We don't know," volunteered Bobby. "But all those boxes couldn't take wings and fly away."
"You go back and get the fellows," Bob commanded Tommy Tucker. "We were having a potato roast down by the lake, and while the potatoes were baking some of us came up for more wood," he explained to the girls. "We thought we heard voices, and so I whistled."
Tommy Tucker was flying down to the lake before half of this explanation was given.
"Have you a holiday, too?" Betty asked. "We're out to get decorations for the play."
"It's the colonel's birthday," explained Bob, "and the old boy gave us the day off. Here come the fellows."
Half a dozen more cadets joined them, all boys the girls had met at the games. They were loud in their expressions of sympathy for the disappointed picnickers and promptly offered their potatoes as refreshments when they should be done.
"Oh, we're going to get that lunch back," announced Bob Henderson confidently. "Look here!"
He pointed to some footprints in a bit of muddy ground.
"Cadet shoes!" cried Tommy Tucker. "Jimminy Crickets, I'll bet it's thatMarshall Morgan and his crowd!"
"But this is a girl's shoe," protested Betty, pointing to another print."See the narrow toe?"
"Ada Nansen or Ruth Royal!" guessed Bobby quickly. "They're the only ones who won't wear a sensible shoe."
"Who," demanded Betty, "is Marshall Morgan?"
"He's a pest," said Tommy, with characteristic frankness. "He has one mission in life, and that is to plague those unfortunates who have to be under the same roof with him. He never does anything on a large scale, but then a mosquito can drive you crazy, you know."
"Dear me, he ought to know Ada," rejoined Bobby. "Perhaps he does. She is a pestess, if there is such a word."
"There isn't," Betty assured her. "Anyway, this won't get our lunch back.What are you going to do, Bob?"
"A little Indian work," was Bob's reply. "We'll send out scouts to locate the thieves and then we'll surround them and let the consequences fall."
"I'll be a consequence," declared Bobby vindictively. "I'll fall on Ada with such force she'll think an avalanche has struck her."
Bob sent some of the boys to trace the steps, and while they were gone outlined his plans to the others. Once they knew where the marauders were, they were to spread out fan-shape and swoop down upon the enemy.
"I figure they'll get a safe distance away and then stop to eat the lunch," said Bob. "It is hardly likely that they will take the stuff back to school with them."
"But Ada went to Edentown," protested Libbie. "We saw her in the bus, didn't we, girls? And Ruth, too."
"They could easily come back in the same bus," said Betty. "Indeed, I'm willing to wager that is just what they did. Miss Prettyman as a chaperone probably killed any desire Ada had to go shopping."
The scouts came back after fifteen or twenty minutes to report that they had discovered the invaders camped under a large oak tree and preparing to open the boxes.
"They were laughing and saying how they'd put one over on you," saidGilbert Lane.
"Well, they won't laugh long," retorted Bob grimly. "How many are there?"
"Marshall Morgan, Jim Cronk, the Royce boys, all three of 'em, Hilbert Mitchell and George Timmins," named Gilbert, using his fingers as an adding machine. "Then there are nine girls."
"Has one of them a brown velvet hat with a pink rose at the front and brown gaiters and mink furs and a perfectly lovely velvet handbag?" asked Betty. "And did you see a girl with black pumps and white silk stockings and a blue tricotine dress embroidered with crystal beads?"
The boys looked bewildered.
"Don't believe we did," admitted Gilbert regretfully. "But one of 'em called a skinny girl 'Ada' and somebody is named 'Gladys.'"
"Never mind the clothes," Bobby told him gratefully. "We knew those two were mixed up in this."
They started cautiously, mindful of Bob's instructions not to make a noise, and succeeded, after ten or fifteen minutes creeping, in getting within hearing distance of the despoilers.
"You girls will have to tend to your friends," grinned Bob. "You can't expect us to discipline them. But we'll give the boys something to remember!"
The party spread out, and at his signal whistle they sprang forward, shouting like wild Indians. Straight for the oak tree they charged and closed in on the group beneath it. Those seated there rose to their feet in genuine alarm.
"Rush 'em!" shouted Bob.
Pushing and scrambling, those in the attacking party began to force the others down the narrow path. The boys were struggling desperately and the girls were resisting as best they could and some were crying.
"Let us out!" wept Ada. "Ow! You're stepping on me! Let us out!"
She kicked blindly, and fought with her hands. The first person she grasped was Ruth, who was nearly choked before she could jerk her fur collar free.
"I will get out!" panted Ada. "Push, girls!"
The circle opened for them, and following Ada they dashed through straight into a tangle of blackberry bushes. Half mad with rage and blind from excitement they ploughed their way through, fighting the bushes as though they were flesh and blood arms held out to stop them. When they were clear of the thicket their clothes were in tatters and their faces and hands scratched and bleeding cruelly.
There was nothing for them to do but to go back to the school and try to invent a plausible story for their condition. All the cold cream in the handsome glass jars on Ada's dressing table could not heal her smarting face and thoughts that night.
Bob and his friends continued on their resolute way, pushing the luckless cadets before them. Once out of the woods, they seized them by the jacket collars and rushed them down to the lake and into the icy waters. They generously allowed them to come out after a few minutes immersion, and the sorry, dripping crew began the long run that would bring them to dry clothes and, it is to be hoped, mended ways.
"Now the potatoes are done," Bob reported, after examining the oven hollowed out and lined with stones. "Why not combine forces and eat?"
Every one was famished, and they found plenty of good things left in the boxes. The uninvited guests could not have had those packages open long before they were overtaken.
After a hearty picnic meal the boys helped the girls gather up their branches and walked with them to the point where their boats were tied. They had rowed over because of the attraction of the woods—Salsette being located on the flat side of the lake—and now they must go back for the afternoon drill that was never omitted even for such an important occasion as the colonel's birthday.
Ada and her chums did not come down to dinner that night, and so did not help with the decorating of the hall. That was pronounced an unqualified success, as was the performance of "The Violet Patchwork" the following night and the nut cake and the chocolate and the pistache ice-cream that was served at the close.
Both audience and players were treated to two surprises in the course of the evening. Bobby was responsible for one and, much to the astonishment of the school, Ada Nansen and Constance Howard for the other.
True to her promise, the dauntless Bobby had accepted the humble rôle of stage hand rather than have no part in the play, and she trundled scenery with right good will and acted as Miss Anderson's right hand in a mood of unfailing good humor. There was not an atom of envy in Bobby's character, and she thought Betty the most wonderful actress she had ever seen.
"You look lovely in that dress," she said, as Betty stood awaiting her cue at the opening of the second act.
Betty smiled, took her cue and walked on the stage.
A ripple of laughter that grew to hilarity greeted her after the first puzzled moment.
"Oh, oh!" cried Madame hysterically, in the wings. "See, that Bobby! Some one call her! She is walking with the tree!"
The rather primitive arrangements of the background provided for the play called for a girl to stand behind each tree in the formal garden scene as support. In her admiration of Betty, Bobby had unconsciously edged after her to keep her in sight, and the startled audience saw the heroine being persistently pursued by a pretty boxwood tree. Bobby was recalled to herself, the tree became rooted in its place, and "The Violet Patchwork" proceeded smoothly.
Between the third and fourth acts, the lights went out at a signal and to the general surprise—for the players had known nothing of what was to come—a velvety voice rolled out in the darkness singing the words of "A Maid in a Garden Green," a song a great singer had made popular that season.
"It's Ada," whispered the school with a rustle of delight. "No one else can sing like that."
They encored her heartily, and she responded. Then the lights flared up and died down again for the last act.
"Constance got her to do it," whispered Betty to Bobby. "I heard Miss Anderson telling Miss Sharpe. Ada's face is so scratched she couldn't, or rather wouldn't, show herself, and Constance said why not sing in the dark the way they do at the movies? That tickled Ada—who'd like to be a movie actress, Connie says—and she said she would."
"Constance Howard has a way with her," remarked Bobby sagely. "Any one that can persuade Ada Nansen to do anything nice is qualified to take a diplomatic post in Thibet."
Soon after the play the weather turned colder and skating and coasting became popular topics of conversation. There was not much ice-skating, as a rule, in that section of the country, but snow was to be expected, and more than one girl had secret aspirations to go from the top of the hill back of the school as far as good fortune would take her.
"Coasting?" Ada Nansen had sniffed when the subject was mentioned to her. "Why, that's for children! Girls of our ages don't go coasting. Now at home, my brother has an ice-boat—that's real sport."
"Well, Ada, I suppose you think I'm old enough to be your grandmother," said Miss Anderson, laughing. "I wonder what you'll say when I tell you that I still enjoy a good coast? If you girls who think you are too old to play in the snow would only get outdoors more you wouldn't complain of so many headaches."
But Ada refused to be mollified, and she remained indifferent to the shrieks of delight that greeted the first powdering of snow. Thanksgiving morning saw the first flakes.
The holiday was happily celebrated at Shadyside, very few of the girls going home. Mrs. Eustice preferred to add the time to the Christmas vacation, and the girls had found that this plan added to their enjoyment. Aunt Nancy and her assistants fairly outdid themselves on the dinner, and that alone would have made the day memorable for those with good appetites, and where is the school girl who does not like to eat?
The Dramatic Club gave another play to which the Salsette boys were invited as a special treat, and a little dance followed the play.
"You're a great little actress, Betty," Bob told her when he came to claim the first dance. "I'm almost willing to let you steer the new bobsled the first time it snows."
The bobsled, built by Bob and his chums, was an object of admiration to half of Salsette Academy. It was large and roomy and promised plenty of speed. The boys, of course, were wild to try it, and Betty and Bobby, who had been promised one of the first rides, joined them in earnestly wishing for snow. Betty had a sled of her own, too, a graceful, light affair her uncle had sent her.
The desired snow did not come for several days. Instead the weather grew still and cold and the girls were glad to stay indoors and work on their lessons or on things they were making for Christmas gifts.
"You may not have much money to spend, Norma," remarked Bobby one afternoon, "but then you don't need it. Just look at the things you can do with a crochet hook and a knitting needle."
Norma, bent over a pretty lace pattern, flushed a little.
"I'd like to be able to give grandma the things she needs far more than a lace collar," she said quietly.
Betty knew that Mrs. Macklin was still in the Philadelphia hospital. Every letter from Glenside now meant "a spell of the blues" for Norma, who was beginning to have dark circles under her eyes. She looked as though she might lie awake at night and plan.
When the girls put away their books and their sewing to go down to dinner, a few uncertain feathery flakes were softly sifting down and late that night it began to snow in earnest, promising perfect coasting.