“Altmount”was so named from the fact that the Alton family had settled, built and managed the mount for more than four generations. The original homestead was now the smallest of the three imposing structures that clung to the hillsides, and was used to house the youngest pupils of the select school, while in a splendid stone and shingle structure recently built, and unquestionably an important executive building for the seminary proper, were domiciled Gloria and Trixy.
Gloria might have been relegated to No. 2 known as the Wigwam, from a curious Indian legend attached to it, but somehow the influential Trixy succeeded in keeping her friend with her. Not quite sixteen, country life and natural fondness for healthy exercise had developed Gloria into the attractive personality termed “wholesome,” but comparing this with the uncertain agesand equally uncertain types about her, very often the “sweet sixteen” was mistaken for seventeen or even greater “teens.”
Now, Pat was seventeen, and she might have been classed among the “little ones.” She was small, round, dimplely and “bubblely.” It would be hard to imagine Pat ever supporting with dignity her real title, Patricia Halliday. Jean Engle was tall and willowy, and wore brown braids in a coronet about her head. She had rather a sharp tongue, and unfortunately her friends laughed at “her cuts.” The comparative isolation of boarding school naturally drew out and magnified each girl’s peculiar traits, so that what might have seemed rude in Jean at home was hailed as “good fun” at Altmount.
It was she who suddenly checked Gloria’s laughter. The departure of Jack had not yet ceased to be a subject for gossip, when a group of the girls were squatted around the Sentinel Pine, the only one tree upon the spacious grounds allowed to foster from year to year the carpet of pine needles about its roots. These were not raked up because they formed so splendid a little rest ground for the fortunate girls who “got there first.”
“You’re not a bit like your cousin,” announced Jean out of a clear sky, favoring Gloria with a critical look at the same moment.
“You mean Hazel?” floundered Gloria, sensing objection in Jean’s pert remark.
“Of course. Hazel seems so—oh, so sort of—well——”
“Do say it, Jean. Glo will forgive you,” broke in Patcharacteristically.
“Oh, you see,” interfered Trixy, “Hazel is temperamental. She has a voice. See how short a time she stayed here. Just a brief year——”
“Where is Hazel now?” asked Blanche Baldwin.
“She is at home when not at the conservatory,” replied Gloria. “Hazel really has a promising voice.”
“Ye-ah,” drawled Pat, with an uncertain smile and an impolite gulp.
“But I meant that, somehow, you don’t seem a bit like Hazel—in your ways,” came back Jean without so much consideration as a direct address with Gloria’s name to soften it.
Gloria bit her lip. Pat bit hers so hard it dragged the dimple out of her chin. Trixy, as usual, knew just what to say and she said it.
“Hazel has rather sophisticated ways for a girl brought up in Sandford. But then, it has always seemed to me, that big town folks are apt to overdo it; like strangers trying on the Boston accent.”
Gloria smiled at Trixy’s adroitness. She had deliberately turned the interests from Gloria’s possible mannerisms to Hazel’s. Still, a suppressed little twinge tugged at her consciousness. Was she different from the other girls? Were her tom-boyish, country ways rude or even rough?
More than once she had noticed surprised eyes staring at her when impulsively she had said or done something as she might have done at her old Barbend home, when Tommy Whitely would have shouted with glee or Mildred Graham chuckled delightedly. But no such result was achieved at Altmount. The girls there, with the exception of Pat and perhaps one or two others, all seemed bent upon outdoing their companions in correct social behavior.
A sort of pairing off followed the discussion of Hazel’s ways. That she had a wonderful voice all were willing to concede, but just what Jean meant by her comparison with Gloria was notclear, at least not satisfactorily clear to Gloria, or her special friends, including Pat.
The school cliques, inevitable, were again being set in motion. Clubs or Sororities were forbidden, as they had been the cause of more than one bitter quarrel among the girls in past years, when the faculty had tolerated the Bluejays, or the Social Sixes or even the Gabfesters, but a girl like Jean is sure to lead in a subtle way. Her pronounced opinions are always easier to accept than to combat, and just now she was “making up” something quite “clicquey.”
“The deceitful thing,” murmured Pat, when girl after girl slipped away from the pine needle carpet to follow Jean’s unspoken suggestion. “And she ate more of our pop-corn than any other three eaters added up.”
“Was she a great friend of Hazel’s?” asked Gloria. Her dark eyes were glinting under rather fluttering lids, and a “set expression,” as good old Jane would have described it, seemed to have suddenly burned out Gloria’s happiness fuse.
“Jean is always pals with theairifiedones,” said Pat, answering Gloria’s question. “The way she eats them up makes me—suspicious.”
Trixy broke into a genuine laugh. Pat could say the wisest things in the queerest way.
“But I notice she didn’t gobble you up,” went on Pat to Trixy. “How come?”
“Do you suppose I am in the way?” Gloria had not yet found a smile and was plainly pouting.
“Silly baby!” chided Trixy. “If you really have saved me from anything like that——” sweeping a hand toward the departing contingent, “then indeed, I am more than grateful.”
“Oh, I have it,” exploded Pat. “Let’s get up an opposition!”
“To what?” inquired Trixy.
“To—to Jean, of course.”
“I wouldn’t satisfy her to do anything of the sort,” sniffed Gloria.
“But don’t you see they are planning something?” asked Pat.
“Who cares?” retorted Gloria. “I’m getting sort of homesick, I guess, but I just would like a whole day away from—all this.” A suspicion of tears dimmed her eyes.
“You have been a perfect lamb, Glo,” declared Trixy, winding her arm about the younger girl’s shoulders in sympathy. “Never made a mite of trouble.”
“But you are sort of used to—to changing about, aren’t you, Glo?” asked Pat, quite innocently.
“Why, Pat, what do you mean?” demanded Gloria, sensing an undercurrent to the last remark.
“Oh, I don’t mean you have been to other schools, or that sort of thing,” returned Pat, brightening up in alarm at Gloria’s tone, “but you see, Hazel was—talkative, and she told everybody how you lived at her house, and about—your mother being dead and all that.” There was no mistaking Pat’s own sincerity.
“So that’s it!” A wave of understanding flooded over Gloria. “They think I lived on Hazel’s folks! Poor relation——” bitterly.
“Gloria Doane, I won’t have you getting such foolish notions in your pretty head,” interrupted Trixy. “If folks don’t know what you and your dad have done for Hazel and her folks, it is only because you are both too high principled to let it be known.” Trix’s eyes were now flashing and her open defense of Gloria was just what any one knowing Beatrix Travers would have expected.
Gloria smiled cynically. “Just the same, Trix, those girls have no use for the cousin Hazel hastold them all about. Not that I mind, really, for I have all I care for, but somehow—Oh, what’s the use?” she broke off sullenly.
“Rudeness is the meanest sort of cut, always,” took up a new voice just as quiet Mary Mears glided up to the little party, from behind the hedge that outlined the path.
“Oh, hello, Mary!” greeted Pat. “Come along and join the wake. You’re welcome,” and she made a place on the big low cut stump.
“I always thought boarding school was composed of sets, little clicques, you know,” continued Mary, “now I’m sure of it. Of course, I’m on the very outer rim——”
“Nothing of the sort,” spoke up Trixy with spirit. “If we care to we may, very easily, have a better, if not bigger, crowd than Jean Engle has. I hate to start things, but as Pat says, there’s no use standing still and applauding their efforts. What do you say, Mary? Shall we organize?”
“I’d love to, but——”
“Now forget the ‘buts’ and let’s!” exclaimed Pat joyfully. “I’ve been in the dumps since Jack went. Never knew how much I depended upon Jack for amusement,” her voice trailed off. “Poor old Jack! I wonder where she is and—why?”
Gloria had not raised her head and therefore could not see the swift change that swept over Mary’s pale face. Trixy again intervened.
“If we organize what is to be our object?” she asked.
“Fun,” snapped Pat.
“Of what sort?” persisted Trixy.
“Oh, every kind. We can’t exactly effect riots in this retreat,” mocked Pat, “but we might get up some highly interesting rows. There’s nothing like a real, tip-top scrap to set the feathers flying.” An anticipatory chuckle gave warning of Pat’s active intentions.
“But really, Trix,” spoke up Gloria, “I have no idea of making a martyr of you on my account. You don’t belong in our baby class and we all know perfectly well that the other girls are crazy to get you in their set, but well, I don’t blame them really, for not wanting to bother with me.”
A ripple of delicious laughter was Trixy’s reply.
“Oh, if you feel that way about it——” began Pat merrily.
All this time Mary appeared to be listening abstractedly. Gloria’s face was serious, with quite an unusual expression for her, but Mary always serious, now seemed actually depressed.The late November day was warm and glowing as any in October, and shadows shot through the giant pine, making murky haloes about the heads beneath. Altogether conditions conspired toward plots and intrigue. It had taken just that long for the usual hikes, lake pleasures, tennis and such sports to lose their interest, and now with the brisk, crisp air of winter’s foreshadow, the pupils at Altmount, naturally, swung to more original forms of recreations.
Pat had been doing most of the talking since Jean so pointedly gathered her chums to other stamping grounds. Of course, Trixy did her best to banish Gloria’s ill humor, the result of that remark from Jean concerning Hazel’s and Gloria’s mannerisms, but the cloud was still there, just as Mary’s moody aloofness was more pronounced as she attempted to hide it.
“Then we’re to have a clan,” repeated Pat. “We’ll ask all the girls who are not manacled to Jean’s ankles.”
“Really, Pat, it wouldn’t be fair to take Trixy from the seniors,” interrupted Gloria.
“Say, Glo!” in quick succession interrupted Pat. “Whatever has come over you? Why the martyr’s crown?”
Gloria swung her chin around and up high in mock contempt. “I was never sure I’d like boarding school,” she remarked evenly. “Now I know I don’t,” she declared emphatically.
“Just because catty Jean Engle digs——”
“No, Pat, that isn’t it. It’s because I’m not the sort that fits in.”
“You’re not the sort that follows the crowd,” broke in Trixy, “but you do fit in, Gloria. Any one can follow the band wagon,” declared Trixy with unmistakable scorn.
“What made you jump so, Mary?” asked the outspoken little Pat. “Do you hate band wagons worse than ‘pizen’?”
“Yes,” said Mary quite helplessly, and even Gloria stared in surprise.
“Seems to me we better adjourn, as the lawyers say ‘sine die.’ We are having such a deplorable time,” concluded Trixy. Even her good nature could be tried too far.
Gloria got to her feet first and looked resolutely at the big building on the hill top.
“Don’t go hating it,” cautioned Trixy, kindly sensing her emotion.
“No, indeed. I’ll have to—conquer it now,” replied Gloria bravely.
“I wish I could feel as you do,” remarked Mary. She was the gloomiest of all.
“Howdoyou feel?” demanded Pat.
“Like running away,” admitted Mary, her lips drawn tight.
“But you wouldn’t! Mary, have you had a sorrow?” asked Trixy impulsively in an undertone.
A quivering lip left words unnecessary.
Trixy linked her arm into Mary’s and the long delayed confidence was under way.
“She’ll cut you out, first thing you know,” warned Pat in Gloria’s nearest ear.
“For Trixy’s sake I hope she does,” declared the sullen girl who even turned aside from Pat’s good-natured arm.
This was the stage of boarding school life usually classified as “the reaction,” and upon just what course the girls would now take depended much of the year’s pleasures or disappointments.
That Gloria and Mary were alike disappointed was very evident, but the cause!
Gloria’s highly sensitive nature was feeling keenly the slights aimed at her by Jean’s contingent, but why Mary Mears should go from the quiet stage to the actual melancholy was puzzling every one.
Would she confide in Trixy?
Would Trixy ever choose any one in Gloria’s place?
And above all, what was the reason that Jacquinot Corday left school several times during the term?
Inquisitive, carefree, little Pat seemed to thrive on the possible replies to such questions, but Gloria’s own heart was too heavy for speculation. She longed for the freedom that lent personal activity, she hated doing things because they should be done, and she was unconsciously preparing for an attack. The smoldering fire is sure to blaze up sometime.