After her third day of solitary confinement, Maude promised to apologize properly to Miss Woodruff the next morning, immediately after prayers.
“Miss Woodruff,” said Maude, standing very slim and straight at her own desk in the Assembly room, “I apologize for the things I did to your—yourclothesthe other night. I’m sorry it was necessary to do them.”
“That will do,” said Dr. Rhodes, raising his hand, hastily—for there was no knowing how far irrepressible Maude might go, with all those other girls ready to applaud. “I’m sure Miss Woodruff accepts your apology.”
“I do,” replied Miss Woodruff, coldly, “but I should also like to have my silver cardcase returned at once. I have always kept it on the right hand side of my dresser, exactly six inches from my pincushion.”
“Sacré bleu! Quel précision!” breathed untidy Madame Bolande.
“When I went to your closet to get that red—well, that redgarment,” replied Maude, “I noticed that the top of your dresser was perfectly neat and tidy. But Ididn’tsee any cardcase. It might havebeenthere but I didn’t notice it. I certainly didn’t take it.”
“Very well,” said Miss Woodruff. “You may now be seated. Classes please.”
Mabel, the other culprit, was now behaving very well indeed. She was learning her lessons, and, under the patient tuition of Miss Emily Rhodes, was improving her naturally untidy penmanship. She was also meekly, conscientiously and courageously going without dessert; and never—it seemed to always hungry Mabel—had there been so very many entrancing varieties of pie, so many choice puddings; and, of all weeks of the year, that was the one that the fat cook chose for the introduction of a brand new custardy affair that every one of the girls declared “simply scrumptious.”
Usually, there was much swapping of food at meal time. Grace Allen didn’t like butter but Ruth Dennis did; and was glad to give her tapioca pudding to Grace in exchange for Grace’s daily butter. Augusta disliked celery but adored pickles so she and Cora carried on an equally gratifying exchange. Mabel always traded her lima beans for Alice Bailey’s cocoanut pie—Alice hated cocoanut—and of course, during that dessertless week Mabel was obliged to refuse not only her own pie but Alice’s. But everybody liked the new custard.
“Taste mine,” tempted little Jane Pool. “It’s just licking good. Come on, nobody’s looking.”
“No,” sighed Mabel, “it wouldn’t be honest. IsaidI’d go without so I’ll go all the way—one week can’t last forever.”
“Never mind, Mabel,” comforted Maude, “I’ll ask Nora to make this kindoftennext week and I’ll give you my share just once so you can catch up. Besides, I owe you that much—I led you into this scrape, you know.”
Going without dessert, however, was a small trouble compared with mysteriously losing two full grown parents. Mabel’s were still missing. As she had no address except Berlin, she wasn’t at all sure that her own letters were reachingthem. She and each of the other Lakeville girls had had several brief, boyish letters from their friend and fellow-camper, Laddie Lombard, the shipwrecked boy they had rescued at Pete’s Patch; but from her parents, not a word for so many weeks that it made Mabel shiver to count them.
Her thoughts, nowadays, were gloomy ones. What if she had to stay at Highland Hall until she was faded and forty like poor old Abbie. What if her skirts kept getting shorter and shorter (or what was more likely, narrower and narrower) like Cora’s. What if her middy blouses faded and frayed like Sallie’s, with no prospects of new ones. And what if sheneversaw her dear parents again—that was the worst thought of all. Her plump easy-going mother, her kind, pleasant father.
Yes, that was the worst thought of all. It weighed Mabel down. No matter what else she might be doing at the moment, Mabel couldn’t quite escape from the steadily increasing weight of that puzzling trouble.
“I’d give all four of my letters from Laddie,” said Mabel, wistfully, “for just a postal card with one little word on it from my mother.”
“Well,” declared Gladys de Milligan, who also was watching the mail bag, expectantly, “if I had a daughter as clumsy as you are I’d chuck her into a boarding school and leave her thereforever. I’d begladto forget about her.”
“Anyhow,” declared Mabel, crossly, “you don’t need to chew gum in my ear, even if youwouldbe that kind of a mother.”
The Lakeville girls tried to cheer troubled Mabel but she could see that they, too, were becoming anxious. Indeed, Bettie had secretly written to Mr. Black about it. Mr. Black, Bettie firmly believed, could fixanything.
“My goodness!” said Cora, one evening, when the girls were waiting for Henrietta to come and tell them ghost stories on the spooky front stairs, “here are the Christmas holidays coming right along and I don’t know what I’m ever going todo. I’ve written and written to my people about the way I’m growing—told ’em I was seven feet tall if I was an inch—and they won’tbelieveme. They think I’mexaggerating! Here I am, growing a mile a minute; but my clothes, alas! are standing still. I’m going home with Maude, to visit her perfectly scrumptious family, and I haven’t one single dud that’s big enough either lengthwise or sidewise.”
“Didn’t the photographs work?” asked Helen Miller. For the Miller girls, at Cora’s request, had taken a number of snapshots of the growing girl to be sent to her doubting parents. Perhaps Cora had grown a little at the very moment in which she was snapped. At any rate the pictures were slightly hazy as to outline; yet, to the girls, they looked convincingly like Cora.
“No,” returned Cora, mournfully. “They didn’t believe that itwasa picture of me.”
“What are you going to try next?” asked little Jane Pool.
“Nothing. I’ve given up. I’ve half a mind to stay right here for the holidays.”
“Nonsense!” said Maude. “You can wearmyclothes—I’ve several things that are too big for me—that new navy blue taffeta, for instance.”
“Icouldn’tdo that,” said Cora, blushing until her freckles disappeared. “Your people would know they were yours. I’d feel ashamed.”
“Yes, that wouldn’t do,” agreed Jean.
“I know what to do,” said Henrietta, who had arrived and was perched on the substantial newel post. “We’llalllend you things. You can take that new white blouse of mine—it will have to shrink beforeIcan wear it.”
“I’ll lend you my pleated skirt,” said Helen Miller, “you have it most of the time, anyway.”
“I have a petticoat that would go with it,” said Dorothy.
“Please—please take my new umbrella,” pleaded little Jane Pool, earnestly. “I want to lend yousomethingand that’s the only thing I have that’s big enough.”
“You’re a bunch of darlings,” said Cora, hugging them all by turns, “and I’ll begladto borrow your things.”
“Of course it’s too late to be of any use for vacation,” said Jean, “but I have an idea. Why don’t you ask Doctor Rhodes to write to your people and tell them the horrible truth about your inches. Have Mrs. Henry Rhodes measure you. Figures, you know, never—well, exaggerate. They may believe Doctor Rhodes.”
“Angel child!” cried Cora, “I’ll do just that. You’ve found the answer.”
Perhaps Jean had, for Doctor Rhodes, both amused and impressed by Cora’s remarkable plight,didwrite to her people and the response was a large box that arrived soon after Cora returned from Maude’s.
“And my goodness!” said exaggerating Cora, “there are tucks a mile wide and hems a mile deep and a whole acre of cloth ineverything.”
Three days after the evening on the stairs, the girls were all in the school room when Sallie, a little late, came in with the mail bag. There was a pleasing plumpness about the bag that day; and, as usual, all the girls crowded into the space just below the rostrum, so that Sallie, the post girl, looked down upon a small sea of eager, upturned faces.
Sallie reached into the bag, as was her habit, and pulled out a letter.
“Miss Eleanor Pratt,” she read. One of the Seniors accepted it, calmly.
“Miss Anne Blodgett, Miss Isabelle Carew, Miss Ruth Dennis, Miss Debbie Clark, Miss Hazel Benton, Miss Gladys de Milligan, Miss Bettie Tucker, Miss Augusta Lemon, Miss Beatrice Holmes—” Another Senior strolled leisurely forward and condescended to accept a letter. Really, those older girls were annoying; they were soblaséabout their mail.
“Miss Mabel Bennett,” called Sallie, in her clear, strong voice.
Mabel seized her letter and waved it, gleefully. “It’s fromMother!” she cried. “Hip, Hip, Hooray!” (There was nothingblaséabout Mabel.)
Sallie, beaming sympathetically, pulled another letter from the bag.
“Miss Mabel Bennett,” she announced.
“It’s from Mother,” Mabel shrieked again.
But when the third letter proved to be Mabel’s, too, Mabel was too breathless with excitement to do more than gasp. When she had received five letters and four postal cards and a package containing thick, remarkably substantial German handkerchiefs, one for herself and one for each of her Lakeville friends, it was almost a relief to hear Sallie read a different name; for even the lofty Seniors were staring at her in astonishment.
“It wasn’t mypeoplethat were lost,” explained Mabel, after she had read all this accumulation of mail. “For quite a long time Mother mailed her letters in an old post-box that wasn’t used any more for that purpose. She didn’t understand enough German when somebody told her that wasn’t the right one. But Father found out about it; and, after a long time, they succeeded in getting the German postmaster to open the old box and send her letters. So I’m not an orphan after all. And this week I’m going to buy something lovely with every penny of my thirty cents for Sallie, because she is.”
Shortly before Christmas, Jean’s father, Mr. Mapes, turned up just in time to whisk the Lakeville youngsters aboard their train. The girls were so glad to see a friend from home that they all but wept tears of joy. Quiet Mr. Mapes was quite pleased and embarrassed at their rapturous greeting—even Henrietta having surprised him with a kiss.
“We’d be glad to see even a beggar fromhome,” explained Mabel earnestly and with her usual frankness—and wondered why Mr. Mapes laughed.
Mabel was to visit among her friends for the holidays. All the other Highland Hall girls except homeless Sallie, Virginia Mason (a quiet girl from far away Oregon) and poor old Abbie, who wasn’t exactly a girl, departed to their homes for a two weeks’ vacation.
It wouldn’t be possible to describeallthe Christmas gifts that the happy Lakeville girls received; but some of the more unusual ones deserve mention. From Germany, Mrs. Bennett sent to each of the five girls a lovely little Dresden pin of exquisite enamel. Mrs. Lombard, the grateful mother of Laddie, the rescued castaway, presented to each a beautiful gold locket containing a pleasing picture of her attractive boy. Mrs. Slater had selected an interesting book for each of Henrietta’s chums; and from Mr. Black, each girl received a beautiful leather writing case “with a place for stamps and everything,” as Bettie said joyfully. Mrs. Crane gave each girl a five dollar gold piece. But Henrietta’s father had sent nothing to his family. This was both puzzling and alarming. He had never before failed to send wonderful gifts at Christmas time.
Of course the Lakeville girls had dispatched parcels to Sallie and had written to her; so for once the post-girl had been able to deliver much pleasant mail to herself.
There was only one trouble with that vacation. It didn’t last long enough.
“Dear me!” said Henrietta, when Mr. Black had returned them all safely to Highland Hall, “those were the shortest two weeks that ever happened.”
This second coming to Highland Hall, however, was quite different from the first; and much pleasanter. The early arrivals greeted the late comers warmly and there was much hugging and kissing in the corridors. With one exception, all the girls and all the teachers had returned. The exception was Madame Bolande.
“I’m pretty sure she was fired,” confided Sallie, inelegantly. “She was in a furious temper when she packed her trunk the day after you left. And I wish you could have seen her room afterwards. Dust and powder and rouge all over the place—I had to help Abbie clean up. She wore her stockings until the feet were gone and then threw them under the bed.”
“I knew she was too awful to last,” said Hazel Benton. “But I did think they’d be obliged to keep her for a whole year. I’m so glad they didn’t.”
At first there was no regular French teacher. Elisabeth Wilson, one of the Seniors, attempted to carry on the classes; but found it difficult to undo Madame’s faulty work. Then one of the Theological students was engaged temporarily; but so many extra girls among the day pupils decided suddenly to take French that the young Theologian fell ill from overwork. Then Henrietta offered to tide the classes over until Doctor Rhodes should hear from the agency that was to supply the new teacher.
The three Seniors were regarded by the rest of the pupils with considerable awe, and it is time that you were hearing more about them. In the first place they were quite old—sixteen or perhaps as much as seventeen; but as Seniors sometimes do, they kept their ages a dark secret. The other girls were permitted to spend only thirty cents a week for candy and other eatables. Not so the Seniors. They could spend all the money they liked, provided their parents supplied it, and they did. They could even send to Chicago for large boxes of candy or cream puffs or Angel’s food cake and eat these delectable things at any hour of the day or night, without interference. In the matter of clothes they were not restricted to middies. They could wear what they liked and they did, Eleanor Pratt was exceedingly dressy. Elisabeth Wilson was a walking fashion plate and Beatrice Holmes of Indiana, managed to out-dress them both. Occasionally, one or another of these superior young persons would condescend to pass her box of chocolates to some of the younger girls; but, for the most part, the proud and lofty Seniors, as Sallie said, flocked by themselves and were not always polite when some thoughtless young person from the lower forms “butted in.”
Their rooms were in the older part of the house and were much grander than those of the other pupils. It meant a great deal to be a Senior—you always spelled it with a very large S—at Highland Hall.
But being a Senior did not exempt Miss Pratt, Miss Wilson or Miss Holmes—never did any other pupil venture to address them as Eleanor, Elisabeth or Beatrice—from losing certain, small belongings.
Two weeks after the holidays, Miss Wilson reported the loss of a small crescent pin, set with diamonds. Miss Holmes had searched her room in vain for a valuable bracelet and Miss Pratt had broken a ten dollar bill in order to buy a quarter’s worth of stamps—and the change had vanished from her purse. Yes, shehadbeen careless to leave it in the pocket of her coat in the cloak room; but that was no reason why any one should have taken it.
“Anyway,” said Sallie, “we know now that it isn’t Madame Bolande who is doing it; and that’s something.”
“Of course,” ventured Henrietta, “it couldn’t be one of the Rhodes family. I know there is some sort of a mystery about them. They all have sort of a queer, shifty look about them; and they all shut right up like clams when you ask questions. You can’t even pry into poor old Miss Emily’s past without frightening her. This is an old school; but except for Miss Julia I can’t believe that the Rhodes people have been here very long. Nowhavethey, Sallie?”
“I can’t tell you a thing,” declared Sallie. “I promised not to and I can’t. Thereisa sort of secret. It isn’t anythingverybad. It’s just something that Doctor Rhodes thinks might make a difference in the attendance if it were known—Goodness! I’ve told you more now than I meant to. Please don’t talk about it, Henrietta.”
“Of course I won’t,” promised Henrietta, “but I’m just as curious as I can be and I’m going to pump poor old Abbie.”
But poor old Abbie showed unexpected strength of mind; she put her fingers into her ears and refused to listen to Henrietta’s blandishments.
“It ain’t for me,” said Abbie, “livin’ here like I be, to be givin’ things away to prying young persons like you and that Jane Pool child that’s always pesterin’ me about my past. I know what I know but you ain’t goin’ to. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”
Every week, some time between three and five o’clock on Saturday afternoon, every pupil, not excepting even the lofty Seniors, was expected to visit the huge attic above the older portion of Highland Hall. Here, arranged in a neat border all around the big room, were the girls’ trunks. Only on Saturdays were the girls permitted to visit them—it seemed, Bettie said, almost like getting back home to see them again each week.
Near the windows were benches and numerous brushes and boxes of blacking. It was here that the girls blacked their shoes, or whitened them, according to their needs. Saturday, likewise, was the day for that.
The third Saturday after Christmas, Mabel, always a little awkward, lost her balance and fell backward into an open trunk. In her efforts to save herself she clutched things as she crashed through the flimsy tray. She came up with a ribbon belt in her hand. There was an odd buckle on the belt. Mabel looked at it curiously. Bettie, polishing one of her best black shoes glanced at it too. Then she looked at Mabel and lifted an inquiring eyebrow. Then both girls stooped to look at the name on the trunk. It was there in plain letters, “Gladys E. De Milligan.”
And then Gladys herself appeared suddenly at the top of the stairs with a second armful of clothing to store in her trunk. She flew at surprised Mabel like a small whirlwind and snatched the belt from her hand.
“What do you mean,” she stormed, “prying in my trunk! And taking my things. I caught you doing it—I’ll tell all the girls.”
“Ididn’tpry in your trunk,” protested Mabel. “I justfellin. Goodness knows I didn’twantto skin my shoulder on your old trunk; and that belt is just what I got when I grabbed.”
“That’s the truth,” added Bettie.
Gladys locked her trunk ostentatiously, pocketed the key and marched downstairs. Mabel looked at Bettie, Bettie looked at Mabel.
“The buckle on that belt looks a lot like the one that Helen Miller made such a fuss about last fall,” said Mabel.
“I know it does.”
“Do you think we’d better say anything about it to the girls?”
“Let’s ask Jean.”
Now Jean was the kindest soul imaginable. Although she had known many things to Gladys’s disadvantage, she had kept silence herself and had influenced her little friends to keep silence likewise.
“Gladys may have found that buckle,” said Jean, “and of course it’s possible that she and Helen had buckles just alike. I don’tlikeLaura—I mean Gladys—but I don’t believe we’d better say anything against her to the other girls.”
“She says things against us,” said Mabel. “She told Sallie that my father was just a corn doctor and that all Bettie’s clothes came out of missionary boxes and that Marjory’s Aunty Jane took in washing—and I shan’t tell you what she said aboutyourfolks but it was just awful.”
“Well, let’s not worry about it. The girls that we like best aren’t going back on us for anything Gladys can tell them and we don’t have to be mean just becausesheis.”
“I suppose it is hard luck,” said Bettie, “to be born the kind of person Laura is. I agree with Jean. Let’s forget her and think of pleasant things.”
Laura was a clever girl in many ways. Naturally bright, she learned easily. Naturally rather a forward child, not easily embarrassed, she recited readily—in spite of her gum—and acquired good marks. She broke very few rules. Even that rule thateveryboarding school girl breaks—the one about remaining in one’s own bed from the time the bell rings for “Lights Out” until it rings again for rising, even that rule was seemingly unbroken by Laura. At any rate, no one ever caught her breaking it. She was rooming now with Victoria Webster in the North Corridor, Victoria having returned thither after the burglar scare was over.
Mrs. Henry Rhodes was matron of the North Corridor, where the Miller girls, Ruth Dennis, Alice Bailey, Hazel Benton, quiet Virginia Mason and some of the older girls roomed. Mrs. Henry, as the girls called her, was easily the most attractive member of the Rhodes family. Quite a young woman, she was both pretty and stylish in a quiet, very pleasing way. Her abundant light brown hair was coiled neatly and becomingly about her small head—she was slender—and not very tall—and Hazel Benton said that she had an aristocratic nose. Most of the girls liked and admired her.
She was not particularly severe or exacting in her duties as matron—Miss Cassandra Woodruff was made of much sterner stuff, as the West Corridor girls knew to their sorrow. Mrs. Henry had once been a boarding school girl herself, likewise a college girl, and her sympathies were with her charges. It was suspected that she didn’t consider it a crime for Dorothy Miller to slip across the hall into Ruth Dennis’s bed to giggle over some joke, or for Hazel Benton to slide into Alice Bailey’s room for a cough drop, or even for half a dozen of the girls to assemble in Dora Burl’s room for a smuggled in, midnight spread of cream puffs; so it is possible that Mrs. Henry didn’t listen, very hard when her charges prowled about at night.
In addition to being a popular matron, she had proved an excellent drawing teacher. Also her needlework classes were turning out good work. She had been married only a short time when her husband died; and, as Cora put it, looked more like a young lady than a widow.
“I wish,” groaned Maude, the day after Miss Woodruff had caught her after “Lights Out” on her way to Cora’s room with a large box of cream puffs under her arm, “that we could swap matrons with the North Corridor. Mrs. Henryknowsthat cream puffs have to be eaten fresh.”
“Yes,” agreed Cora, “it was certainly a crime about those cream puffs. Four dozen of them at sixty cents, besides what we gave Charles for smuggling them in. Eight of us chipped in with our whole week’s allowance. And what did old Woodsy do but keep them in her warm room all night, and then, after every last one of them had soured beyond hope, she ordered them served for the whole school for lunch.”
Twice a week, from half past seven to nine, there was dancing in the dining room. The tables were pushed back and the floor waxed. Sallie Dickinson had to help with that, so, though she loved to dance, she was usually too tired to do it. Miss Julia Rhodes and the three Seniors took turns at the piano. Miss Julia played “The Blue Danube,” and other sentimental waltzes left over from her own rather remote girlhood. The Seniors were much more modern. They played Sousa’s rousing marches with so much vigor that even Mabel, who had never really learned to dance, felt simply compelled to get up and two-step. And whentwoof the Seniors, at separate pianos, pounded out “The Washington Post,” stout Miss Woodruff, who had been brought up to believe that it was wicked to dance, kept time so vigorously with her feet that (in spite of her hectic nightwear) she always suffered next day from rheumatism in her plump ankles.
Mabel’s sense of rhythm was good and, for a heavy child, she proved surprisingly light on her feet. At the same time she was clumsy and was continually bumping into other dancers or getting in their way and being bumped. Jean and Bettie danced only moderately well. Inexperienced Jean was a trifle stiff as to knees and elbows and Bettie was not stiff enough. Marjory was like a bit of thistledown, here, there and everywhere, so that Jane Pool and little Lillian Thwaite were the only persons sufficiently nimble to keep step with her.
Henrietta danced very well indeed. She had had several terms of dancing lessons and was, besides, naturally graceful. As a partner, Henrietta was in great demand. In the early months of the school year, all five of the Lakeville girls had been fairly popular, but now, since soon after the Christmas holidays, something was wrong. Except for the girls from her own town, no one but Sallie, Maude Wilder and Jane Pool asked Marjory to dance. Little Lillian Thwaite had even gone so far as to refuse Marjory’s invitations.
“I’m engaged forallthe dances,” fibbed Lillian, glibly.
Marjory might have believed her if she had not later heard Lillian asking Gladys for the next two-step. For some reason Marjory was becoming more and more unpopular and the little girl was quite troubled about it. Any little girlwouldhave been.
Gladys danced almost as well as Henrietta did; but Henrietta was the pleasanter dancer to look at. She carried herself prettily, her clothes seemed always just exactly right and Henrietta herself, with her sparkling eyes, her vivid coloring, her dark, becoming curls, was always an attractive sight. Gladys was invariably overdressed for these occasions. Her hair was over-done and her complexion entirely unnatural. She arched her back in an artificial way, crooked her elbows at curious angles and managed to stick her left little finger out in a most peculiar and quite ridiculous manner. Added to this, she invariably chewed gum quite as industriously as she danced.
“It wouldn’t be so bad,” commented Mrs. Henry Rhodes, viewing this spectacle with amusement, “if Gladys chewed in time to the music; but she doesn’t.”
Even the frozen countenance of the older Mrs. Rhodes thawed into something like a smile when Gladys danced and chewed. Still, apparently many of the girls liked to dance with Gladys; but those who did held aloof from the four Lakeville girls and more particularly from Marjory and Mabel.
“I know what I think,” said Marjory, confiding in Mabel one evening when they were the only girls who had not been asked by some one else to waltz. “Laura Milligan has been saying things about us again, and more and more of the girls are believing what she says. It gets a little worse every dancing night. It’s terrible to beunpopular.”
“I know it,” agreed Mabel. “The only friends we have in this school now are the girls that won’t associate with Laura. Maude just hates her and so does Sallie. Jane Pool does, too. And I don’t think Victoria Webster likes her any too well, even if shedoesroom with her.”
“The Seniors make fun of her,” said Marjory; “I’ve seen them do it. Miss Wilson imitates the way she chews gum and Miss Pratt sticks her little finger out the way Laura does. If Augusta wasn’t just a silly goose herself she’d never waste a minute on Laura. And the Miller girls and Isabelle haven’t as many brains in their three heads as little Jane Pool has in her one—I heard Miss Woodruff tell them that in school yesterday. And Grace Allen hasn’t any mind of her own at all. She just thinks what Laurawantsher to think, and then passes it on.”
“The friends we have arenicegirls,” returned Mabel. “Maude, Cora, Sallie and the others. Just the same it makes me just mad to be snubbed and cold shouldered and left out byanybody.”
“Me too,” said Marjory. “I know you can’t waltz, but let’s get up and do it anyway. We don’t need tolooklike wallflowers even if we are.”
There was another evidence of Marjory’s growing unpopularity. Once in two weeks there was a general spell down in the Assembly room. Some of the girls loved it, some of them hated it, according to their ability to spell; but they all quivered with excitement while it was going on.
Two of the Seniors marched importantly to the far corners of the room from which point, turn and turn about, they chose sides; and of course it was considered an honor to be among the first called—and a disgrace to be among the last.
Jean and Marjory spelled very well indeed and were usually among the first to be chosen. Mabel spelled just about as badly as anybody could and was always the last. Sheexpectedto be. She had grown accustomed to her place at the end of the line and felt as if it belonged to her. Bettie, Grace Allen, Augusta Lemon and Cora were easily downed; but sometimes survived the first word. Isabelle Carew could spell if she kept her mind on it, but once Miss Woodruff had given her the word “Claritude,” and she had gone to dreaming in the middle of it. She spelled it “Clar_ence_.” Of course, after that, everybody knew that Isabelle could not be considered a dependable speller.
But Marjory was. Her ears were keen and she liked to spell. It was a difficult matter to spell her down. SometimesbothSeniors, in their eagerness to get her, called her name in the same breath and then squabbled just like ordinary girls over which should have her. But now, for some undiscoverable reason, Marjory was being left with Mabel until the very last moment—until every other possible girl had been chosen. And this dreadful thing had happenedtwice.
The first time this happened, Marjory was so disconcerted that she almost forgot how to spell the very easy word that fell to her lot. The second time she was glad to hide behind tall Isabelle, who stood beside her; for there was a large lump in her throat, tears in her gray eyes and a tell-tale pink flush dyeing her small fair face from brow to chin.
Truly it was a terrible thing to be an unpopular person. Marjory wished she could sink through the floor, even if she landed, as she thought shemight, in the laundry tubs beneath.
It was a dark afternoon outside and in. Sallie and the Lakeville girls were darning stockings in Henrietta’s room and the light was really too poor for so gloomy an occupation. They were glad when Maude dropped in, swept the stockings from the table and seated herself thereon. A few moments later Cora and little Jane Pool strolled in, followed shortly by Debbie Clark.
“Come on in, girls,” said Maude. “‘Nous avons les raisins blancs et noirs mais pas de cerises.’ In other words, there are no chairs but help yourselves to the floor. You’re just in time. Here’s Mabel cross as two sticks, Marjory terribly doleful for some unknown reason and Henrietta sulking every day at mail time and for hours afterwards. Such a grouchy bunch! What shall I do to cheer you up?”
“It is rather dark just now,” admitted Jean, “but you know we’re all going to the ice cream festival in the basement of the Baptist church tonight. That ought to cheer most anybody.”
“Except Augusta Lemon,” said Cora.
“Why?” asked Henrietta. “Because we have to go early and get away from there before the Theologs arrive on the scene at eight thirty?”
“No, but she’s torn a great jagged hole in the front of her best dress and spilled ink on her second best frock. Since she’s been going with Gladys, she feels as if shehadto be dressy.”
“We ought to help her out,” said kind-hearted Jean.
“So we ought,” said Maude, a wicked light beginning to dance in her golden brown eyes. “I have a beautiful idea. I think we ought to help her out a whole lot.”
“How?” asked Marjory.
“Well, you know what a goose she is—how easy it is to make her do what you want her to do—”
“Yes,” said Cora, “she hasn’t any backbone.”
“Not a particle,” agreed Sallie.
“Well, then, I’ll persuade her to let me dress her up for tonight. Let’s borrow the very gayest things we can find. Let’s see how far we can go. Let’s make her look perfectly awful.”
“Oh, no,” pleaded Jean.
“Now be good, Jean, and don’t spoil our fun,” begged Maude. “We just want to cheer these gloomy children up. I know Augusta will be a cheerful sight when we get her all dolled up.”
“I’ll do her hair,” laughed Cora. “I’llcurlit.”
“Youcouldn’t,” declared Marjory. “It’s the straightest hair that ever grew.”
“I’ll try, anyway. But where are the gay clothes coming from?”
“There’s that fearful sport skirt of Hazel Benton’s,” suggested Sallie. “The one with the very wide green and white stripes. You might borrow that, Maude.”
“And my bright pink sweater,” offered Debbie Clark.
“Dorothy Miller has a pair of awfully pink silk stockings,” said little Jane Pool. “And Augusta herself has a pair of those silly high heeled pumps like Gladys’s. Wouldn’t it be fun to put pink bows on them!”
“Ruth Dennis has some on her lamp shade,” offered Sallie. “And her curtains are tied back with pink ribbons. They’d do for her hair.”
“Good,” laughed Maude. “Now there ought to be a blouse—who has the gayest one?”
“Isabelle has,” said Mabel. “That robin’s egg blue one.”
“Good,” said Maude. “Now I’ll go and gather in all those duds and dump them in here. And then Cora and I will call on Augusta. After we get her talked over, you can help dress her, Henrietta. The rest of you giggle too easily—you’d give the show away. But you can peek in one at a time through the transom if you’re very careful.”
“I can provide a gorgeous string of bright red beads,” offered Henrietta. “And I know where I can get a pair of earrings. She’ll be a perfect scream.”
Augusta was not at all a pretty girl. She had a large, rather stupid face (Henrietta said she looked like a sheep) a meager amount of very stiff and very straight taffy colored hair, her complexion was pale and pasty and her figure was bad; mostly because she was not careful to stand nicely. She proved as easily led as Maude had predicted. She accepted the girls’ offer of assistance with alacrity.
“You’d be lovely with curls,” persuaded Cora, wickedly. “I happen to have a curling iron and an alcohol lamp in my pocket right now. I was just carrying them around—well, just carrying them around, you know. Matches too. Well now, we’ll just light up the little lamp—like that—and we’ll try a little curl—like this. Sit still so I won’t burn your ears—they stick out a good deal so I have to be careful. Here’s Henrietta—she’ll tell us a lovely story while I curl. You’re going to be so beautiful that nobody will know which is you and which is the ice cream.”
“Here’s this adorable skirt,” said Maude, returning with a gay armful of garments. “But you ought to have a bath.”
“I had one last night,” said Augusta.
“Then I’ll dress your feet,” said Henrietta, grabbing the pink silk stockings and flopping down on the floor.
“But they’repink,” objected Augusta,
“They are Dorothy Miller’s very newest ones,” persuaded Maude, not disclosing the fact that a color-blind aunt had given them to Dorothy for Christmas. “She got them because—because her aunt read in ‘The Well Dressed Woman’ that pink silk stockings should always be worn to ice cream festivals.”
“Did she really?” demanded round-eyed Augusta.
“Pink and green,” declared Maude, hastily holding up the starched skirt to hide her own smiling countenance, “are complementary colors, Mrs. Henry says. You wear them together. The pink brings out the green and the green brings out the pink. And robin’s egg blue—that’s your soul color, Augusta.”
“It doesn’t match the skirt,” objected Augusta.
“It matches youreyes,” said Maude. “Oh, Henrietta! Her feet are beautiful! Yes, Ilikethe bows on her pumps.”
“Ouch!” gasped Augusta, “youdidburn my ear.”
“I’ll be more careful,” promised Cora, whose shoulders were shaking. “Just two more lovely curls and I’ll be done—you never saw such adorable curls.Muchnicer than Gladys’s.”
“Now the pink sweater,” said Henrietta.
Suddenly there was a crash outside the door, a sound of giggling and of swift scurrying. It was Mabel’s turn at the transom; and the chair had tipped over. Her friends hustled her across the hall along with the chair and examined them both. There were bruises but nothing broken.
“What was that?” gasped Augusta. “Something hit my door.”
“Nothing there,” said Cora, peering into the hall. “The corridor’s perfectly empty. It was probably Miss Woodruff rising from her nap.”
“Wouldn’t it be better,” suggested Maude, thoughtfully eying gorgeous Augusta, “if she were to wear her everyday dress over these things when she goes down to dinner!”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Henrietta. “I’ll tell you what, Augusta. Let’s keep this a lovely surprise for the girls tonight. Not the curls. We’ll just slick those down a bit with a wide black ribbon. But we’ll pull some black stockings over the pink ones and cover your skirt and blouse. The first minute after dinner we’ll rush right up and peel you and put on the pink bows and beads and things.Thisis just sort of a dress rehearsal.”
“The Highland Hall girls simply won’t know you when they see you at the festival,” assured Maude, when Augusta had agreed to keep the secret until her arrival at the church parlors. Poor Augusta was not accustomed to so much attention from Maude, Henrietta and Cora, all of whom she had admired from a distance, and it pleased her. And, in their hilarious state over the success of their joke, the three naughty girls failed to realize that in making a laughing stock of poor silly Augusta they were not playing fair.
It is true that they suffered a few twinges during dinner time when pleased Augusta beamed at them with a new friendliness and insisted on dividing her dessert among them; but when the proper time came, they peeled her remorselessly, bedecked her with the ridiculous pink bows and smuggled her into the procession without giving the secret away.
The girls not in the secretweresurprised; but after all, it was the plotters themselves who were the most completely astonished.
Augusta in all her pinkness—not to mention her blueness and greenness—was a conspicuous object; she was visible from any place in the big room. Now, the Theological students were not to arrive until much later; but the younger boys from Hiltonburg were there in full force. There was an expectant flutter among the Highland Hall girls. On a similar occasion, introduced by some of the day pupils, these same boys had treated several of them to ice cream. Perhaps they’d do it now. Extra ice cream would be very welcome for they had all spent their weekly pocket money and Doctor Rhodes felt that he was sufficiently generous when he provided one helping apiece for his large flock.
But now, with one accord, all the boys at the festival, attracted by Augusta’s brilliant attire and not yet of an age to be critical, were seized with a yearning to treat gorgeous Augusta to ice cream. They begged to be introduced. They begged to be allowed to offer Augusta ice cream and yet more ice cream. And cake and yet more cake.
The wondering girls, staring at blushing Augusta, were amazed to see that she was actually pretty, in spite of her outrageous clothes, for her curled hair fell tenderly and becomingly about her glowing face, her eyes were like stars and she fairly radiated happiness as she ate dish after dish of ice cream. There seemed to be no limit to her capacity.
“And hereweare,” breathed Henrietta, “sitting in a long row like so many sheep—”
“And only one dish apiece,” groaned Maude. “Next time I’ll pin all the pink bows onmyself.”
Very soon after this surprising occasion, there was another social event and another surprise for our young friends; but not apleasantsurprise for anybody. A disgraceful thing happened. Miss Julia Rhodes’s music pupils gave a public concert in the Assembly room. It was not the concert that was disgraceful; though, owing to the embarrassment of most of the performers, the music was bad enough; and Hazel and Cora felt that they had completely wrecked the occasion when, in stooping to draw out the bench on which they were to sit while playing their duet, they unexpectedly bumped heads, much to the amusement of the audience and to the detriment of their duet.
No, bad as it was, it wasn’t the concert but what happened while it was going on, that publicly disgraced Highland Hall. A number of the village people were invited to the concert and the day pupils, of whom there were perhaps a score, had been asked to bring their parents and friends.
All these guests had hung their wraps in the lower hall, where ordinarily the day pupils hung theirs. Several of the women had carelessly left their purses in their pockets. When they attempted to pay their carfare on the way home, not one of them had a single penny. Some pilfering person had taken every scrap of cash from every purse, and in some cases even the purses were missing.
The principal losers wrote indignant notes to Doctor Rhodes, who naturally was anything but pleased.
Right after prayers the next morning, Doctor Rhodes called the school to order. His face was sterner than usual and his voice was unusually harsh. He told the girls what had occurred, and what a disgrace it was to any school to have such very unpleasant things happen to its trusting guests.
“Moreover,” said he, “many losses of jewelry and money by the pupils in our own dormitories have been reported to me from time to time; and, while it would have been possible, night before last, for a thief to have slipped into that lower hall from outside, I have a feeling that there is some one right in our own school who isn’t—well, to put it plainly—quite as honest as she might be. I don’t like to say this or to think it. I am sorry for the necessity.
“It has been suggested that the person taking these various things might save herself trouble if she were to leave them on the table in the library some time during the day. That room is never occupied during school hours; so the repentant thief would be entirely safe from observation. I am giving some one a very good chance to get out of an unpleasant predicament. I hope she will take advantage of it and mend her ways from this time forward.”
Of course after that, even a very stupid person could have guessed the topic of conversation wherever little groups of girls gathered together. Oh, how their tongues did wag! Oh, how they whispered and nodded their heads! And oh, how many more young persons had lost things that they hadn’t hitherto mentioned. Of course they wondered all day long what was happening in the library. But the day passed and the library table was still empty. Nothing had been returned.
Jean and Bettie were dressing for dinner the next night when Sallie, in a most unusual state of excitement, burst into their room, and flung herself upon Jean’s bed.
“I’m—I’m so mad I could scream,” sobbed Sallie, thumping the pillow with her clenched fist and lashing the air with her feet. “I could kill all that Rhodes family. I—I—I—”
But now Sallie’s words were drowned in sobs.
“Goodness, Sallie, don’t cry so,” said Jean. “You’re in an awful state.”
“Whowouldn’tbe in an awful state if—if—” More sobs.
“There, there,” comforted Jean, patting the heaving shoulders. “Get a glass of water for her, Bettie. That’s right. Now take a little drink, Sallie.”
“If—if it were anybody but you,” said Sallie, suddenly jerking herself upright, “I’d throw that water straight in your face! I’m somad!”
But Sallie clawed the wet hair from her own face, drank the water and handed the glass to Bettie.
“There, now,” said she. “I guess I can talk. You know where I room up on the top floor with Abbie? Well,youknow and everybody else knows that Abbie has no money; and that I have just about as much as Abbie has which is just none at all. We are the only people in this school who havenospending money. The other Doctor Rhodes used to give—”
“TheotherDoctor Rhodes,” gasped Bettie.
“I didn’t mean to say that,” returned Sallie, quickly. “What I mean is just this. I have no money and everybody knows it. Very well, then. I’m the very person that would steal money. And jewelry. I—or poor old Abbie.”
“But you wouldn’t,” soothed Jean.
“But—but some folksthinkI would. Now, a real paying pupil would get mad and go home if Mrs. Rhodes searched her bureau drawers, wouldn’t she?”
“I should say so,” agreed Jean.
“Well, Mrs. Rhodes and Mrs. Henry Rhodes searched mine and Abbie’s.”
“But they didn’tfindanything,” comforted Bettie, “so you don’t need to care.”
“But theydid. There was a pocketbook under the pin cushion. Mrs. Drayton’s calling cards were in it. She lost hers here the other night, you know—and that wasn’t the worst. There was money in it—more than two dollars.”
“Were you right in the room all the time?” queried horrified Bettie.
“No, I happened to go upstairs quietly and there they were looking in all our bureau drawers and under our mattresses and even in the pockets of our clothes. They had already found the purse.”
“Was Abbie there?”
“No, she was down in the kitchen. Doctor Rhodes sent for me and for Abbie to go to the office. He asked us which of us took that pocketbook and I could see that poor old Abbie was just as surprised as I was—you know you can always see just what she thinks. And, oh! Abbie thoughtItook it. She gave mesucha suspicious look.
“And then, Doctor Rhodes asked her if she had ever known of my stealing anything before that. Oh,thinkof him asking that! And Abbie—well, you know Abbie is never very positive about anything. She said ‘I don’t know. I don’t guess I ever did.’ But I could just see that she thought Ihadtaken that miserable purse. She’s so simple minded that she believes anything you tell her. She could see that those Rhodes people were accusing me, so she believes, of course, they were right.”
“Butwedon’t,” Jean and Bettie assured her.
“But other people will. I don’t know what to do. I’d run away if I had any place to run to.”
“If you ran away,” said Jean, wisely, “they’d besureyou had done it. It’s braver to stay right here and go on just as usual.Weknow you didn’t do it—why, weknowyou didn’t. And tomorrow when I have my drawing lesson I’ll tell Mrs. Henry Rhodes that you told me all about it and I’ll let her see that Bettie and I believe in you. And she’ll tell Doctor and Mrs. Rhodes—I’ll ask her to. Mrs. Henry understands girls; and she always helps us when we ask her to.”
“Don’t worry,” comforted Bettie. “It’ll come out all right—I know it will. Things always do if you just wait long enough.”
“I wonder,” said Isabelle’s fretful voice in the hall, “what’s happened to dinner—it’s ten minutes past the time.”
“My goodness!” cried Sallie, “I forgot all about that bell.”
“I wish,” said Jean, after Sallie had scurried away down the corridor, “that Sallie wasn’t a boarding school orphan. She’s much too nice. I like her ever so much.”
“Yes,” agreed Bettie, “she’s one of the sweetest girls in this school even if she hasn’t any clothes or pocket money or anything. And I’d believe in her even if they found a bushel of strange purses under her pin cushion.”
“I used to think Ilikedto get letters,” said Henrietta, walking up and down the long veranda, arm in arm with Hazel Benton and Jean, “but now I don’t. My sweet old grandmother doesn’t say much but I can see that she’s worried to death because she doesn’t hear from my father—she always asks ifI’veheard. We haven’t either of us had a word since last June. Of course, often it is two or three months between letters because he gets into such unget-at-able places; and when there, gets so interested in what he is doing that he doesn’t realize how the time is getting away, and quite often there are no postoffices that he can possibly reach. But he does try to write often enough to keep us from worrying. Then there are some people in England who look after his money and other business matters for him. Well, grandmother saystheyhaven’t heard from him; and she thought perhaps I’d brought my last letter from him with me—it had the name of a place that hemighthave gone to in it. But I left it in Lakeville—I think I can tell her just where to look for it—in one of those lovely little boxes that he sent me from India.”
“It must be lovely,” breathed Hazel, “to get presents from India.”
“It is—when I’m getting them. But now I don’t like any of Grandmother’s letters. I just hate to open them. She’s trying not to frighten me and at the same time she’s just scaring me to pieces. I didn’t think much about it before I left home last fall, but when I didn’t get a single thing from him at Christmas time (healwayssends me things for Christmas) I was sure there was something wrong. And then, of course, I began to think of all the things thatmighthappen to a man that looks at a map and then plunges right into it, whether it’s wet or dry, the way Daddy does. And goodness! It’s a wonder there’s a man left on this earth. I can imagine suchawfulthings. I wake up in the night and worry for hours.”
“What does your father do for a living?” asked Hazel.
“He doesn’t do anything for aliving,” explained Henrietta, who for some time had been wearing a worried expression that was new to her. “He just does what he does because he’s perfectly crazy about digging up things—like tombs and buried cities and old marble statues. He’d rather find the nick that came out of a prehistoric platter than to own a brand new set of dishes.”
“He must be quite handy with a shovel by this time,” said Hazel.
“Oh, he doesn’t do the digginghimself,” explained Henrietta. “He hires folks—natives mostly. They do the actual digging but he is always right there to make sure that they work carefully. Otherwise they’d smash valuable finds and that would be worse than not digging them up at all. He knows a wonderful lot about pottery and old metals and marbles and—just loads of things. He’s an archæologist.”
“No wonder you were able to spell the whole school down on that word, yesterday,” said Hazel. “It must be wonderful to have a father like that.”
“It would be,” returned Henrietta, soberly, “if he didn’t have to take such dreadful risks.”
“He has been lost several times,” comforted Jean, “and he has always turned up again all right.”
“Yes, but once he was sick and almost died of a horrible fever; and another time some Arabs robbed him and kept him for three months in a perfectly dreadful prison, and another time his guides got frightened and deserted him and he had to buy himself back from the folks that captured him.”
“No wonder you can tell us stories on the front stairs,” exclaimed Hazel. “But isn’t there any way to search for him?”
“Well, there’s this about it. If Mr. Henshaw, in London, gets really worried, he’ll send a relief expedition to hunt him up. They did it once before.”
“Well,” said Hazel, “I hope they’ll find him. And that reminds me—speaking of lost things and things that you dig up—my precious lapis lazuli beads are gone. I wore them to church two Sundays ago; and IknowI put them back in their case, in my bureau drawer. When I opened it this morning, the case was empty. I reported it to Doctor Rhodes at once and it’s on the bulletin board right now. Those beads don’t look like so very much but they cost a young fortune. They’regood. You see, I have a daughterless aunt who gives me lovely things—except when she goes alone to pick them out as she did those pink stockings; she’s color-blind, unfortunately. Never anything useful, you know, just luxuries. Mother says Aunt Annabel hasn’t a sensible idea in her head.”
Jean laughed suddenly. Then she explained the cause of her mirth.
“I had a funny thought,” said she. “If Hazel’s aunt and Marjory’s Aunty Jane were shaken up in a bag, it might make two average aunts, mightn’t it, Henrietta? Marjory’s aunt doesn’t believe in luxuries—”
“Then,” interrupted Hazel, with an odd, searching look at Jean, “Marjory doesn’t have very many?”
“None at all,” returned Jean. “She’s really an abused child. But I’m sure her aunt thinks all the world of her.”
“Marjory was crazy about those blue beads of mine,” said Hazel. “I let her wear them once in awhile before Christmas.”
“That’s so,” said Henrietta. “You and Marjory were quite chummy for awhile, weren’t you? Why aren’t you chummy now, if a lady may ask?”
“I don’t know,” returned Hazel, evasively. “That is, I don’t care to say. We just aren’t friends.”
“If it’s anything that Gladys de Milligan has said,” offered Henrietta, “you don’t need to believe it. That girl has tried to say mean things to me about every girl in this school. She’s a wretched little beast and I detest her.”
“I don’tlikeher,” said Hazel, “and I don’t listen to her when I can help it, but some of the things she’s said have beentrue.”
“That’s the worst of Gladys,” said Jean. “She always manages to mix a little truth in with her yarns; and that makes people believe them.”
“Mercy!” whispered Henrietta, a few minutes later. “How long have Gladys and Grace been walking just behind us? How much do you suppose they heard?”
That very night, during the dancing hour, Marjory Vale was one of a group of girls clustered about Henrietta, who was demonstrating a new dance, that later became exceedingly popular.
Marjory, in the middle of the floor, was plainly visible when she pulled her handkerchief from her pocket. Something came with it—a long string of dull blue beads. The metal clasp had been caught in the hemstitching of the handkerchief but now came loose, allowing the heavy beads to land noisily on the hardwood floor. Marjory gazed at them for a long moment.
“For goodness’ sakes!” gasped Marjory, genuinely surprised. “How did I do that?”
“My beads!” shrieked Hazel, springing from her chair and pouncing on the necklace. “Marjory Vale!Youtook those beads out of my drawer.”