But suddenly Nan, as well as those about her, were quite startled by Bess Harley’s shrill outburst.
“Linda Riggs!” she cried. “You are the very meanest girl I ever saw! If you say another mean thing about Nan Sherwood I’ll box your ears for you!” and the superheated Bess advanced upon her antagonist, her hand raised, prepared to put her threat into execution.
“Well! I would have boxed her ears, I don’t care!” Bess gasped, when Nan succeeded in pulling her down into her chair. “You ought to have heard what she said about you——”
“I’m glad I didn’t,” Nan answered and sighed. “And one good thing—it broke up that foolish speech-making. I’m so ashamed——”
“Of me!” flared up Bess. “I was only standing up for you.”
“Hereafter, dear, do your standing up, sitting down,” laughed Nan, hugging her still overwrought chum.
“Well,” pouted the tearful Bess, “I—I don’t care!”
“I’ll fight my own battles.”
“But you never fight!” burst out Bess.
“Isn’t that just as well?” Nan observed, rather gravely. “Suppose your mother heard of your wanting to box a girl’s ears in a public place like this car? And how Professor Krenner looked at you!”
“Oh, I don’t care for him,” muttered Bess.
“Of course you do. He will be one of our teachers.”
“That Riggs girl says that none of the girls at the Hall think much of Professor Krenner,” grumbled Bess. “They say he’s cracked.”
“I wouldn’t repeat what that Riggs girl says,” admonished Nan, with some sharpness. It exasperated her for Bess to show that she had been influenced at all by the rude rich girl.
“Well, I’ve found out I don’t like her,” Bess sighed.
“I discovered I didn’t, before,” Nan rejoined, dryly.
“But she’ll tell awful stories about us at Lakeview Hall,” Bess said with a worried air.
“Let her tell,” scoffed the more sensible Nan.
“We—ell! We don’t want to begin school with all the girls against us.”
“They’ll not be. Do you suppose that girl has much influence with the nice, sensible girls who attend Lakeview Hall?”
“We—ell!” exclaimed Bess, again. “She’s rich.”
“Bess! I’m astonished at you,” declared Nan, with some heat. “Any one to hear you would think you a money-worshipper. How can you bear to be friends with me when my folks are poor.”
Bess began to laugh at her. “Poor?” she repeated. “And your dear mother just fallen heir to fifty thousand dollars?”
“Oh—well—I forgot that,” returned Nan, meekly. “But I know you loved me before we had any prospect of having money, Bess. Don’t let’s toady to rich girls when we get to this school. Let’s pick our friends by some other standard.”
“I guess you’re right,” agreed her chum. “I’ve had a lesson. That hateful thing! But if she does tell stories about us to the other girls——”
“We can disprove them by Professor Krenner,” added Nan. “Don’t worry.”
“I don’t like him,” repeated Bess, pouting.
But Nan did. She was quite sure the instructor with the big, shell-rimmed spectacles, understood girls very well indeed, and that he would be a good friend and a jolly companion if one would allow him to be.
There was that about Professor Krenner that reminded her of her own dear father. They were both given to little, dry jokes; they were both big men, with large, strong hands; and they were both very observant.
How she would get along with the other instructors at Lakeview Hall, and with Dr. Beulah Prescott, herself, Nan did not know; but she felt that she and Professor Krenner would always be good friends.
Nor was she afraid of what Linda might say about her at the Hall. Nan Sherwood was deeply hurt by the girl’s arrogance and unkindness; butshe had too large a fund of good sense to be disturbed, as Bess was, over Linda’s threatened scandal.
“I don’t believe a girl like her really has much influence among other girls—not the right kind of girls, at any rate,” Nan thought. “And Bess and I don’t want to get in with any other kind.”
She was just as eager as she could be, however, to get to Lakeview Hall, and find out what it and the girls were like. Boarding school was an unknown world to Nan. She felt more confidence now in herself, as the train bore her toward the wild Huron shore on which the school stood, than she had when she journeyed up into the Michigan woods with her Uncle Henry, back in mid-winter.
In that past time she was leaving her dear parents and they were leaving her. Each revolution of the car wheels were widening the space between “Momsey” and “Papa Sherwood,” and herself. By this time Nan had grown used to their absence. She missed them keenly—she would do that up to the very moment that they again rejoined her; but the pain of their absence was like that of an old wound.
Meanwhile she was determined, was Nan, to render such a report of her school-life to her parents as would make them proud of her.
Nan was not a particularly brilliant girl in her books. She always stood well in her classes because she was a conscientious and a faithful student.Bess, really, was the quicker and cleverer of the two in their studies.
Nan was very vigorous, and loved play much more heartily than she did her books. Demerits had not often come her way, however, either in grammar school or high school. Mr. Mangel, the Tillbury principal, had felt no hesitancy in viséing Nan’s application blank for entrance to the same grade as Bess Harley at Lakeview Hall. Nan, he knew, would not disappoint Dr. Beulah Prescott.
This school that she was going to, Nan knew, would be very different from the public school she had attended heretofore. In the first place, it was a girls’ world; there would be neither association with, nor competition with, pupils of the other sex.
Nan was not wholly sure that she would like this phase of her new school life. She liked boys and had always associated with them.
Nan could climb, row, skate, swim, and cut her initials in the bark of a tree without cutting her fingers.
Her vigorous life in the woods during the past six months had stored up within her a greater supply of energy than she had ever before possessed. She had, too, seen men and boys doing really big things in the woods; she had seen courage displayed; she had partaken of adventures herself that called upon her reserves of character, as well as muscle.
Indeed, Nan was quite a different girl in somerespects from the timid, wondering child who had gone away from Tillbury clinging to Uncle Henry’s hand. More than ever she felt the protecting instinct stir within her when she saw her chum going wrong. She knew she must assume the burden of looking after Bess Harley in this new world they were entering.
Two hundred girls to compete with! It looked to be such a lot! Lakeview Hall was a very popular institution, and although the building was not originally intended for a school, it answered amply for that purpose—as Professor Krenner told her. One end of the great structure had never been completed; for its builder’s ideas had been greater than his resources.
She knew that the castle-like structure standing upon the bluff overlooking Freeling and the troubled waters of Lake Huron, was much too vast for a private dwelling, and that as a summer hotel it had years before signally failed.
Under the executive care of Dr. Beulah Prescott the place had expanded into a large and well-governed school. Nan looked forward with both hope and fear to meeting so many other girls all at the same time.
The cost of tuition at Lakeview precluded the presence of many pupils whose parents were not at least moderately wealthy. In fact, it was a very exclusive school, or “select” as Linda Riggs hadcalled it during her brief hour of friendship with Bess Harley. Nan devoutly hoped that not many of the other girls would be as “select” as Linda Riggs.
Among the two hundred girls, surely not many could be so purse-proud and arrogant as the railroad magnate’s daughter. Nan had not been long enough removed from poverty to feel that she really was rich, nor was it, after all, an enormous fortune. Her mother’s money was altogether too new an acquisition to have made much of an impression upon Nan’s mind, save to stir her imagination.
She could, and did, imagine a sublimated “dwelling in amity” on the little by-street in Tillbury. She looked forward to the time when she and her parents would be together in their old home; but she could not imagine their style of living changed to any degree.
The life before Nan in the boarding school, however, she realized would be different from anything she had ever experienced. Later, as dusk began to shut down and the switch targets twinkled along the right of way, she peered ahead eagerly for the first sight of the school.
It appeared. Like an old, gray castle on the Rhine, such as she and Bess had read about, the sprawling, huge building was outlined against the sky on which the glories of the sunset were reflected. The little town in the valley was scarcely discerniblesave for its twinkling evening lamps; but the Hall stood out boldly on the headland—a silhouette cut out of black cardboard, for not a single lamp shone there.
Bess was in a great bustle as the train slowed down for Freeling. She gathered all their possessions, that nothing might be missed this time, and then started for the door with only her shopping-bag and raincoat.
“You’re forgetting something, Bess,” cried Nan.
“Oh, no!” returned her chum, her eyes opening very wide and very innocently. “Can’t be possible. Suit-case, bag, coats, lunch box—I wish you would throwthataway, Nan! Sure, that’s everything.”
“Yes. But you forget I’m not a dray-horse,” Nan said drily. “Come on and take your share of the load for once.”
“Oh! I forgot,” murmured Bess, faintly, as Nan proceeded to load her down.
They got out on the platform and the train steamed away. Professor Krenner had disappeared. They did not know that he had remained aboard the train, which stopped at a flag-station a mile up the track—a point nearer to his cabin than Freeling proper.
There were a few bustling passengers in sight,but none of them were girls. Even Linda Riggs had disappeared.
“What shall we do?” asked Bess, helplessly. “Not a soul to meet us, Nan!”
“Well, you didn’t expect all the girls would turn out with a brass band to greet us, did you?” chuckled Nan.
“But surely there must be some means of conveyance to the Hall!”
“Shank’s mare, maybe,” returned her cheerful chum.
“You can laugh!” cried Bess, as though she considered Nan’s serenity a fault. “But I don’t want to climb away up that hill to-night in the dark, and with this heavy old suit-case.”
“Quite right. That would be too big a premium placed upon education,” laughed Nan. “Let us ask.”
A man with a visored cap who was hurrying past at this juncture, was halted and questioned.
“B’us for the Hall? Yes, Miss. Just the other side of the station if it hasn’t already gone,” he said.
“There! we’ve lost it,” complained Bess, starting on a run.
“Impossible! How could we lose it when we never have had it?”
“Oh, you can be funny——”
They rounded the corner of the station just as apair of slowly-moving horses attached to a big, lurching omnibus, were starting forward. The man driving them leaned down from the seat, speaking to somebody inside the ’bus.
“Sure there ain’t no more of you to-night, Miss?” he asked. “Dr. Prescott said——”
“I know there’s no more of me, Charley,” Miss Linda Riggs’ voice interrupted tartly. “And if you don’t hurry along you won’t get your usual tip, I can tell youthat!”
“Oh!” murmured Bess, hanging back.
“She’s trying to run away with the school ’bus,” declared Nan, in some anger. “Now, she sha’n’t do that, Bess!”
“Let her go,” begged Bess. “I don’t want to ride with her.”
“Pshaw! I’m not dying for her company, either,” Nan confessed. “But I want to get up to that Hall to-night.”
The omnibus had completely turned around, heading away from the station.
“Hi, there!” cried Nan.
“Drive on, Charley,” commanded Linda Riggs, loudly.
The ’bus driver evidently did not hear Nan’s call. The latter dropped her bag and tossed her own coat to Bess.
“I’m not going to let him get away from us,” she cried.
But Bess seized her arm. “Oh, don’t! Let’s not have another quarrel with that Riggs girl right here.”
“Dear me! I haven’t quarreled with her at all, yet,” said Nan, somewhat amused.
“She’s—so—mean,” began Bess, when Nan interrupted:
“Well! we’ll just beat her to it at that!”
“Oh, how, Nan?”
“We’ll get there first.”
“But,how?”asked her chum again.
Several automobiles were standing beside the platform and Nan swiftly approached the driver of the nearest one.
“Do you know how to get to Lakeview Hall?” she asked of this person.
“Why—yes,” he said. “Of course.”
Nan saw that he was only a young boy; but he wore gauntlets, had goggles attached to his cap, and was evidently old enough to drive the car.
“Can you take us up there?” Nan asked.
“Why—yes,” again rather doubtfully.
“Come on, Bess!” called Nan, with satisfaction. “We’ll beat that Linda Riggs after all.”
“Oh, I say!” murmured the youthful automobile driver.
But Nan paid little attention to him. Having engaged him for the trip she hustled Bess and thebaggage into his car without another word to him. Finally she leaped in, too, and banged the door of the tonneau.
“There! we’re all ready,” she said to the boy.
“Oh—well—if you say so,” he murmured, and obediently cranked up and then stepped into the car himself.
“Say!” whispered Nan to Bess. “He’s an awfully slow thing, isn’t he? I don’t see how he makes any money tooling people around in this auto.”
“What’s botheringme,” whispered Bess, “is how we’re going to pay him? I haven’t but twenty cents left. You know I bought candy on the train, beside that lunch.”
“Not having wasted my money in riotous living,” laughed Nan, “I can pay him all right.”
The automobile whisked through the streets of the lower town in a few moments. They passed the lumbering ’bus with a scornful toot of the horn. In the suburbs they went even faster, although they were climbing the bluff all the time.
Lakeview Hall was alight now, and as they approached it between the great granite posts at the foot of the private driveway it looked more friendly.
A honk of the automobile-horn in notification of their approach, and immediately the cluster of incandescent lights under the reflector on the greatfront porch blazed into life. The wide entrance to the Hall, and all the vicinity, was radiantly illumined.
“Goodness!” ejaculated Nan. “I guess they do meet us with a brass band!”
For, with shouts of welcome, and a great flutter of frocks and ribbons, a troop of girls ran out of the Hall to welcome the newcomers.
“Here she is, girls!”
“Walter’s the boy to do an errand right!”
“Weren’t we the thoughtful bunch to send him after you?”
“Hey, Linda! we’re going to have the same old room, Mrs. Cupp says.”
The automobile came to a stop. The boy driver drawled:
“Some mistake, girls. I didn’t see Linda Riggs at all. But here’s a couple of new ones.”
Bess had uttered a horrified gasp; but Nan was almost convulsed with laughter. She could usually appreciate the funny side of any situation; and to her mind this most certainly was funny!
It was plain that Linda Riggs was popular enough with some of her schoolmates to have them welcome her with special éclat. They had engaged this boy with the automobile to meet her at the station.
In place of Linda, arriving in the motor car, Nan and Bess had usurped her place; while evennow the old ’bus was rumbling up the driveway with Linda inside.
“Goodness! who can they be?” remarked one of the girls, staring at Nan and Bess.
The former was quite composed as, with her own and Bess Harley’s possessions about her on the lower of the four broad steps leading up to the veranda, she drew out her purse to pay the boy for the trip from the station.
“How much?” she asked him, without observing the surprised group in her rear.
“Why—I——It’s nothing,” stammered the young chauffeur.
“Oh, yes it is!” exclaimed Nan. “Of course you have some regular charge—even if you were not there at the station just to meetus.”
“No—o, I don’t,” he declared. “There’s nothing to pay.”
“But theremustbe!” cried Nan, a little wildly. “Surely you run a public car?”
“No. This is my father’s car,” admitted the boy, whom Nan now saw was a very good looking boy and very well dressed. “I was just down there to meet a friend——”
“Yes, and I don’t see how you missed her, Walter,” interrupted the girl behind Nan, and who had spoken before. “For here is Linda now, in Charley’s old ’bus.”
“Oh my!” murmured Bess.
Nan began to feel great confusion herself. It was not so funny, after all!
“Why—why, then you donothave this car for hire?” she asked.
“No, ma’am,” said the boy, meekly. He was looking at Nan Sherwood admiringly, for she made a very pretty picture standing there in the strong glow of the electric light. “But I didn’t mind bringing you up—not at all.”
“Oh!” gasped Nan.
“You are an awful chump, Walter,” observed the girl who had spoken before. “Grace said you could do an errand right; but it seems you’re quite as big a dunce as your sister.”
“Grace is not a dunce, Cora Courtney!” exclaimed the boy, with some show of spirit, as he started his car, not having shut off his engine. “Good night,” he said to Nan, and was gone around the curve of the drive as Charley brought his lazy horses to a halt before the door.
“Here I am, girls!” cried Linda Riggs, putting her head out of the ’bus window. Then she saw Nan and Bess standing on the steps of the portico, and she demanded involuntarily:
“How did those two girls get here ahead of me?”
“Well! I must say it’s a good joke on you, Linda,” said the tall girl, called Cora Courtney, in response to Miss Riggs’ observation.
“What do you mean?” snapped the railroad magnate’s daughter.
“Why, they came up from the station in the auto we girls sent after you. You know it’s against the rules for us to go down into the town so late, so we couldn’t send a delegation for you; but that little Grace Mason said her brother would bring you up.”
“Walter Mason!” exclaimed Linda, hopping out of the old ’bus. “Is that who was driving that car?”
“Yes. That was Walter. And Walter is as big a dunce as his sister,” declared Cora, crossly. “He went right by you and brought up these two girls.”
Linda’s face was very much flushed. That she had overreached herself in this matter, taught the obstinate girl nothing. She had deliberately misinformed the ’bus driver, when she told him therewere no other girls on the train, and had hurried him away from the station.
So she had overlooked Walter Mason and his car, and the boy had not seen her. Her scowl as she looked upon the now calm Nan and the almost petrified Bess, did not improve Linda’s personal appearance.
“Oh! I am not surprised at anythingthosetwo do,” scoffed the rich girl, loftily.
“Hullo!” exclaimed Cora. “They don’t seem to have done anything except to get a free ride.”
“Indeed, that is just it!” cried Linda, with a toss of her head. “Anythingfreeis just what they are looking for. One of them let me pay for her lunch on the train. And the other——”
“Girls!”
The voice, very mellow and sweet (it reminded Nan Sherwood of her mother’s own in its soft cadence) seemed to quell all harsher sounds instantly—the sharp voice of Linda, even the querulous notes of the katydids in the grove before the Hall, and the strident tones of the crickets.
“Girls!”
Nan flashed a glance up the steps. There had softly swept to the break of the short flight, a lovely lady in trailing robes, gray bands of hair smoothed over her ears, gray eyes as luminous as stars; and only the soft lace at the low-cut neck of her gownto divide its gray shade from the softly pink complexion of Dr. Beulah Prescott.
“She’s beautiful,” breathed Nan in her chum’s ear.
“Girls!” then said the preceptress of Lakeview Hall again. “The supper gong is sounding. Bring the new arrivals in. They may have ten minutes in the lavatory on this floor before appearing at table.”
“How do you do, Linda? I hope you are quite well. And these are two of our new girls?”
Nan and Bess had picked up their possessions and now mounted the steps hesitatingly.
“Come right here, my dears,” said Dr. Prescott, holding out a slim, beautifully white hand on which there was no jewel. “It must be that you are the two friends from Tillbury, who were to arrive by this train.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Nan said.
“You are Nancy Sherwood?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“And this other is Elizabeth Harley?” pursued Dr. Prescott, shaking hands with them both.
Bess began to breathe more freely. It was one thing to face Linda Riggs down in the train; but in the presence of all these girls who knew her and did not know the newcomers—bold Elizabeth found her pluck oozing rapidly away.
Dr. Prescott beckoned to one girl of the group, and said: “Play hostess in my stead, Laura, please. This is Laura Polk, Nancy and Elizabeth. She will show you where to freshen up a bit before supper, and lead you to the dining hall, as well. Owing to the delay of the workmen in making some repairs, we are still in some confusion, but you will be assigned to your rooms before supper is over. I hope you will be very happy with us.”
She patted Nan’s shoulder, put her arm for a moment around Bess, and then floated—rather than walked—away. Nan had never seen anybody so graceful of carriage as this lady. Even “Momsey,” whom she worshipped, could not cross a room as did the preceptress of Lakeview Hall.
The girl whom she had introduced to the two friends, Laura Polk, was a smiling, freckled girl, with a fiery thatch of hair. It was not bronze, or red-gold, or any other fashionable color. It was just plain, unmistakable red—nothing else.
She seemed to be a very pleasant girl. What Linda Riggs had said about Nan and Bess in her hearing made no impression on Laura.
“Come on, lambkins,” she said. “I wager you feel all cinders and smutch after such a long ride in the cars.”
“We do,” Nan agreed fervently.
“W’ay from Chicago?”
“Yes,” said Bess, finding her voice.
“I came up myself day-before-yesterday,” said Laura. “I know what it is.”
She led the way through the great entrance hall and down a side passage to the tiled and enameled lavatory. Even Bess was impressed by the elegance of the furnishings. The rugs were handsome, the carpets soft, thick pile, the hangings richly decorative. Nan, of course, had never seen anything like it.
“What a delightful place,” Bess said to her chum. “And such good taste in the decorating.”
“Hope the supper will taste just as good,” Nan returned grimly. “I’m hungry in spite of the lunch I ate. You spoiled your appetite with tea and candy.”
“I didn’t suppose there was anything left for me in that old box when you got through,” sniffed Bess.
“Oh, yes there was—and is,” laughed Nan. “It’s good, too.”
“Oh, girls!” broke in their red-headed guide. “Have you really part of your train lunch left?”
“Yes,” said Nan, shyly.
“Is it in that box?” asked Laura Polk, quickly.
“Yes.”
“Then hang onto it, do!” begged Laura.
Nan and Bess looked at each other wonderingly, and then both of them questioningly at Laura.
“Oh, you’ll be glad of my advice—probably thisvery night. Dr. Beulah doesn’t approve of us girls eating between meals, and the girl that manages to sneak a bite up to her room to eat at bedtime is lucky, indeed,” Laura declared, quite seriously. “I tell you, I have sometimes lain for hours in the throes of starvation because I didn’t have even a cracker.”
“Goodness!” gasped Bess. “I should think you would take up something from the supper table.”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Laura, hollowly. “Wait till you have seen the supper table.”
“What do you mean?” queried Nan, curiously.
“You see all this luxury about you,” proclaimed the red-haired girl, solemnly. “You beheld the magnificence of the main hall as you came in. And it extends to Dr. Beulah’s apartments, which are downstairs here, on the right of the main door.
“But when you turn the other way,” continued Laura, “and approach the chaste and nunnery-like rooms devoted to the uses of ‘us young ladies,’ as Mrs. Cupp calls us, you will at once and immediately be struck, stroke, and stricken with the vast and monstrous difference between our part of the castle and Dr. Beulah’s.
“Oh!” cried this extravagantly speaking girl, “Dr. Beulah has her course dinner at night, carried in by black Susan on a mighty tray. I have often thought that it would be a great lark to catch Susan in the back hall, blindfold her, threaten herwith the boathouse ghost if she squealed, and bear off the doctor’s dinner as the spoils of the campaign.”
“But goodness me!” cried Nan, when she could speak for laughter. “Don’t they really give you enough supper?”
“Wait! Only wait!” repeated Laura, warmly. “You’ll soon see. Dr. Beulah believes most thoroughly in ‘the simple life’—for us girls. Oh, she do—believe me! And I think Mrs. Cupp even counts the crackers that go on each dish that is set on the table at supper time.
“Sometimes we have crackers and milk for supper,” added Laura, dropping her voice to the tone of one telling a ghost story at midnight. Then in a still more ghost-like voice she repeated: “Sometimes we have crackers and milk. The lacteal fluid is usually twice skimmed, first for the teachers’ table (they have cream in their coffee in the morning), secondly for the thin, anæmic fluid we get on our oatmeal. But, anyhow, it is milk.
“There are never more than seven crackers on a plate—just seven, the perfect number,” sighed this hyperbolical girl. “I’ve counted them again and again. Why seven, and not six, or eight, deponent knoweth not. I think Mrs. Cupp counts them out that way for some fell purpose of her own,” went on Laura, reflectively. “She must have the crackers all numbered and she deals ’em around as in a gameat cards. Anyhow, I tried a trick once and it didn’t work, so I believe she has them numbered.”
“What did you do?” asked wide-eyed Bess.
“The girl next to me didn’t appear at supper. I took her crackers and slipped them down my stocking. But Mrs. Cupp caught me before I got out of the room, took me to her den, and made me disgorge the booty——”
A mellow gong clanged through the building. Nan and Bess, who were now almost convulsed by their new friend’s remarks, had managed to make some sort of a toilet.
“Come on!” whispered the red-haired girl, hoarsely. “Never mind your bags and wraps.Theywill be perfectly safe on that settee. But hang onto the lunch box. If Mrs. Cupp findsthatshe will confiscate its contents, I assure you.”
She thrust the box into Bess’ hands and drove both the new girls before her, like a fussy hen with two chickens.
The girls crowded into the dining hall from all directions. Nan and Bess were told that there were many who had not yet arrived; but to the two strangers from Tillbury it seemed as though there was a great throng.
The curious glances flung at Nan and her chum confused them, the buzz of conversation added to their embarrassment, and had it not been for the red-haired girl, Laura Polk, they would have been tempted to turn and flee. They were quickly shown to seats, however, at a table where every seat was filled with laughing, chattering girls. As the school was not yet fully organized for work, there was no person in authority to take the head of the table. Nan and Bess were glad to note that their acquaintance, the red-haired girl, was with them. Bess was under the embarrassing necessity of holding the lunch box in her lap.
“Hullo, Laura!” whispered one mischievous girl from across the table. “I thought you were going to have your hair dyed this vacation?”
“So I did,” declared Miss Polk gravely.
“Well! I must say it didn’t seem to do it any good,” was the next observation.
“That’s just it,” said the serious, red-haired girl. “The dye didn’t take.”
“I really do wonder, Laura,” said another of her schoolmates, “how your hair ever came to be such a very reddish red.”
“I had scarlet fever when I was very young,” said Miss Polk, promptly, “and it settled in my hair.”
The smothered laughter over this had scarcely subsided when another girl asked: “Say, Polk! what’s your new chum, there, got in her lap?”
This pointed question was aimed at Bess, who blushed furiously. Laura remained as grave as a judge, and explained:
“Why, it’s her lunch. She seems to be afraid she won’t get supper enough here and has brought reinforcements.”
The laughter that went up at this sally drew the attention of many sitting near to that table. Bess Harley’s eyes filled with angry tears. She saw that the red-haired girl had set a trap for her, and she had walked right into it.
Bess really had feared she would not have supper enough. Having refused to eat out of the lunch box on the train, her appetite had now begun unmistakably to manifest itself. If the usual supper served the pupils of Lakeview Hall was as scantyas Laura Polk had intimated, the remains of the lunch Bess’ mother had bought for the two chums in Chicago would be very welcome indeed.
A glance around the table, however, soon assured even unobservant Bess that the red-haired girl was letting her tongue run idly when she criticised the food served. There were heaps of bread and biscuit, plenty of golden butter, and a pitcher of milk that hadnotbeen twice skimmed, beside each plate. Besides, there were apple sauce and sliced peaches and cold meat in abundance. The supper was plain, but plentiful enough, considering that Dr. Prescott believed in giving her girls their hearty meal at noon.
Nan had at once suspected that Laura Polk was joking. But, even she had not appreciated the fact that the red-haired girl was deliberately laying a trap for them until the subject of the lunch box was brought up. Nan whispered quickly to Bess:
“Laugh! laugh! Laugh with them, instead of letting them laugh at you!”
But Bess could not do that. She was very angry. And as soon as these fun-loving girls saw she had lost her temper, they kept the joke up.
Bess angrily allowed the lunch box to fall to the floor under the table. But, as the meal progressed, gradually almost every dish on the table gravitated toward Bess’ plate.
“Want any more of your apple sauce, Cora?” thequestion would be raised, quite gravely. “No? Well do pass it this way, we’re hungry over here,” and the half-eaten apple sauce would appear at Bess Harley’s elbow.
Her plate was soon ringed about with pitchers of milk, half-empty butter plates, broken biscuits, dabs of peaches and apple sauce in lonely-looking saucers. Nan was almost choked with a desire to laugh; and yet she was sorry for her chum, too. If Bess had only been able to take the joke in good part!
“Don’t show that you are so disturbed by their fun,” begged Nan of her friend.
“Fun! I’ll write my mother and have her take me away from here,” muttered Bess, in a rage. “Why, these girls are allbeasts!”
“Hush, honey! don’t make it worse than it already is,” advised sensible Nan. “The madder you get the more they will enjoy teasing you.”
A rather severe and plainly dressed woman, wearing spectacles, who had been walking about among the tables, now came to the one where Nan and Bess were seated. She looked somewhat suspiciously at the dishes pushed so close to Bess Harley’s plate; but all the girls at the table were as sober as they could be.
“Dr. Prescott tells me you are the two girls from Tillbury,” she said to Nan.
“Yes,” was the reply. “My friend is Bess Harley and I am Nan Sherwood.”
“We are glad to have you with us, and you have been assigned to Number Seven, Corridor Four. Your trunks will be unpacked in the trunk room in the basement to-morrow.” Then she flashed another glance at the array of dishes before Bess.
“What is the meaning of this?” she demanded.
“I—I——,” Bess stammered, and some of the girls gave suppressed giggles.
Laura Polk soberly came to her rescue—or appeared to.
“This is her birthday, and all the girls have been giving her presents. At least, that is the way I understand it.”
Irrepressible laughter broke out around the table. Even Mrs. Cupp smiled grimly.
“I fancy you started the birthday presentation, Laura,” she said. “Let us have no more of it.”
When she had passed along Laura Polk leaned forward to whisper shrilly across Nan to Bess:
“Have a care, Bess! I think Mrs. Cupp suspects you. Don’t try to smuggle any of that apple sauce up to Room Seven, Corridor Four, in your stocking!”
Of course this was all very ridiculous, and, taken in the right spirit, the introduction of Nan Sherwood’s chum to Lakeview Hall, would not have been so bad. This was really a mild initiation to the fraternal companionship of a lot of gay, fun-loving girls.
But Bess had a high sense of her own dignity. At home, in Tillbury, because her father was an influential man, and her family of some local importance, nobody had ever treated her in this way. To be an object of the ridicule of strangers is a hard trial at best. Just then, to Bess’ mind, it seemed as though her whole school life at Lakeview Hall must be spoiled by this opening incident.
Nan felt for her friend, for she well knew how sensitive Bess was. But she knew this was all in fun. She could not help but be amused by the red-haired girl’s jokes. There wasn’t a scrap of harm in anything the exuberant one did or said. There was no meanness in Laura Polk. She was not like Linda Riggs.
Had it not been for Nan, Bess would never have found her way to Room Seven, Corridor Four, she was so blinded with angry tears. The room they were to occupy together was up two flights of broad stairs, and had a wide window overlooking the lake. Nan knew this to be the fact at once, for she went to the open window, heard the soughing of the uneasy waves on the pebbly beach far below, and saw the red, winking eye of the lighthouse at the mouth of Freeling Inlet.
“This is a lovely room, Bess,” she declared, as she snapped on the electric light.
Bess banged the door viciously. “I don’t care how nice it is! I sha’n’t stay here!” she cried.
“Oh, pshaw, Bess! you don’t mean that,” returned Nan.
“Yes, I do—so now! I won’t remain to be insulted by these girls! My mother won’t want me to. I shall write her——”
“Youwouldn’t?”cried Nan, in horror.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You don’t mean to say you would trouble and worry your mother about such a thing, just as soon as you get here?”
“We—ell!”
“I wouldn’t do that for anything,” Nan urged. “And, besides, I don’t think the girls meant any real harm.”
“That homely, red-headed Polk girl is just as mean as she can be!”
“But she has to take jokes herself about her red hair.”
“I don’t care!” grumbled Bess. “She has no right to play such mean tricks onme. Why did she tell me to take that horrid old lunch box in to supper?”
“Because she foresaw just what would happen,” chuckled Nan.
“Oh! you can laugh!” cried Bess.
“We should not have been so gullible,” Nan declared. “That was a perfectly ridiculous story Laura told us about the food being so poor and scanty, and we should not have believed it.”
Bess was staring at her with angry sparks in her eyes. She suddenly burst out with:
“That old lunch box! If it hadn’t been for you, Nan Sherwood, we would not have brought it here with us.”
“Why——Is that quite right, Bess?” gently suggested Nan.
“Yes, it is!” snapped her chum. “If you had taken my advice you would have flung it out of the window and eaten in the dining car in a proper manner.”
There were a good many retorts Nan might have made. She wanted to laugh, too. It did seem so ridiculous for Bess to carry on so over a silly joke. She was making a mountain out of a molehill.
But it would be worse than useless to argue the point, and to laugh would surely make her chum more bitter—perhaps open a real breach between them that not even time could heal.
So Nan, in her own inimitable, loving way, put both arms suddenly about Bess and kissed her. “I’m awfully sorry, dear; forgive me,” she said, just as though the fault was all hers.
Bess broke down and wet Nan’s shoulder with her angry tears. But they were a relief. She sobbed out at last:
“I hope I’ll never,neversee a shoe-box lunch again! I just do——”
To interrupt her came a solemn summons on the door of Number Seven—rap, rap, rap!The two newcomers to Lakeview Hall looked at each other, startled.
“Goodness! what can that be?” demanded Nan.
Rap! rap! rap! the knock was repeated.
“Did you lock that door, Bess?” exclaimed Nan.
Before her chum could answer, the knob was turned and the door swung slowly open. Several figures crowded about the opening portal. It was no summons by one of the teachers, as Nan and Bess had expected. The first figure that appeared clearly to the startled vision of the two chums was rather appalling.
It was a tall girl with a pillow case drawn over her head and shoulders. Her arms were thrust through two holes in the sides and she could see through two smaller holes burned in the pillow case. She leaned on a broom, the brush part of which was also covered with white muslin. Upon this background was drawn a horned owl in charcoal.
This horned owl was no more solemn than were the girls themselves who came filing in behind their leader. They came in two by two and circledaround the work table which was set across the room at the foot of the two beds. The second couple bore a big tea-tray and on that tray reposed—the forgotten lunch box Bess had dropped under the supper table!
Poor Bess uttered a horrified gasp; Nan came near disgracing herself in her chum’s eyes forever, by exploding into laughter. There was a faint giggle from some hysterical girl down the line and the leader rapped smartly upon the floor with the handle of the decorated broom.
“Ladies!” ejaculated the leader, her voice somewhat muffled behind the pillowslip.
“Votes for women!” was the faint response from somewhere in the line.
“Silence in the ranks!” exclaimed Laura Polk, snatching the tin tray away from her partner and banging on it with her fist. The lunch box, decorated with a soiled bow of violet ribbon, had been placed on the table.
“Ladies!” repeated the girl behind the mask. “We have with us to-night, in our very midst, as it were, two sawneys who should beinitiated into all the rites and mysteries of Lakeview Hall.”
“Hear! hear!” sepulchrally came from the red-haired girl.
“You’d better keep still, too, Laura,” admonished another girl.
“Oh! very well!” answered Laura.
“These sawneys must be taught their place,” pursued the leader of the gay company.
The term “sawney” in the lumber camps and upon the Great Lakes, means tyro, or novice. These girls had picked up the phrase from their brothers, without doubt. Bess thought it a particularly objectionable name.
“First of all,” said the girl in the pillowslip, “they must join our procession and march as shall be directed. Fall in, sawneys, behind the first two guards. Refuse at your peril!”
Nan’s mind was already made up. This was only fun—it was a great game of ridicule. To refuse to join in the sport would mark her and Bess for further, and future, punishment.
Before her chum could object, Nan seized her and ran her right into line ahead of the red-haired girl and her companion.
“Ready! March!” commanded the masked girl.
“Hold on!” objected Laura Polk. “These two sawneys ought to be made to eat their lunch.”
Bess fairly snorted, she was so angry. But Nan would not let her pull away. She cried, before her chum could say anything:
“Oh! we promise to eat it all before we go to bed.”
“That will do,” declared the leader. “Be still, Polk. March!”
Against her will at first, then because she did notknow what else to do, Bess Harley went along beside her chum. “The Procession of the Sawneys”—quite a famous institution, by the way, at Lakeview Hall—was begun.
“Where’s the next innocent?” demanded one girl, hoarsely.
“Number Eighteen, on this corridor,” was the reply. “That girl from Wauhegan.”
“Wau—what-again?” sputtered Laura Polk.
“There, there, Polk!” admonished the masked leader. “Never mind your bad puns. Here we are. Attention!”
The procession halted. The leader banged the door three times as she had at Number Seven, with the handle of the broom.
“Come in! don’t stop to knock,” called somebody inside.
“There! that’s the way to treat us,” grunted Laura, as the door swung inward.
“Sh!” the girls all became silent.
There was a light in the room and a tall, thin girl, with rather homely features but a beautiful set of teeth, scrambled up from the floor where she had been sitting cross-legged, arranging her lower bureau drawer.
“Gracious—goodness—Agnes!” she gasped, when she saw the head of the procession.
Then silence fell again—that is, human voices ceased. But the visiting girls marked instantly thepeculiar fact that the room sounded like a clock-shop, with all the clocks going.
There was an alarm clock hung by a ribbon right beside the head of one of the two beds in the room. A little ormolu clock was ticking busily on the bureau, and an easel clock stood upon the work table. In the corner hung an old-fashioned cuckoo clock in one of the elaborately carved cases made in the Black Forest, and just at this moment the door at the top flew open and the Cuckoo jerked her head out and announced the time—nine o’clock.
This was too much for the risibility of the girls crowding in at the door, and no pounding of the broom handle could entirely quell the giggles.
“And she’s wearing a watch!” gasped one girl. “And there’s another hanging on the side of the mirror.”
“Why, girls!” burst out Laura Polk. “We’ve certainly caught Miss Procrastination herself. You know, ‘procrastination is the thief of time,’ and this Wau—what-again girl must have stolen all these timepieces.”
“Didn’t either!” declared the occupant of the room. “Pop and I took ’em for a debt.”
“Hush!” commanded the girl in the pillow case. “What is your name, sawney?”
“Amelia Boggs,” was the prompt reply.
“Amelia, you must come with us,” commanded the leader of the sawney procession.
“Oh! I haven’t time,” objected the victim.
There was another outburst of laughter at this.
“Let her take her time with her,” Laura declared; and they proceeded to hang the alarm clock around Miss Boggs’ neck, the ormolu on one arm and the table clock on the other. Both watches were pinned prominently on her chest, and thus adorned, the girl from Wauhegan was added to the procession.
It had certainly become a merry one by this time. Even Bess discovered that this sort of fun was all a good-natured play. She could not laugh at others and remain sullen herself; so her sky gradually cleared.
At the next door behind which a “sawney” lurked, instead of knocking, the leader set off the alarm-clock. It was a sturdy, loud-voiced alarm, and it buzzed and rattled vigorously.
The two girls inside, both the new one and the sophomore whose room she was to share, rushed to the door at this terrible din. This initiate was a little, fluffy, flaxen-haired, pink and white girl, of a very timid disposition. She had been put to room with Grace Mason, of whom Nan and Bess had heard before.
Nan was particularly interested in Grace, who seemed to be of a very retiring disposition, and was very pretty. But her new room-mate was even more timid. She at once burst into tears when she saw the crowd of strange girls, having beentold that the girls of Lakeview Hall hazed all strangers unmercifully.
The visiting party tied a pillow case on the flaxen-haired girl for a bib, and made her carry a towel in each hand for handkerchiefs. One girl carried a pail and bath sponge, and the procession halted at frequent intervals while imaginary pools of tears were sponged up from the floor before the victim’s feet.
The procession might have continued indefinitely had not Mrs. Cupp appeared at ten o’clock and put a stop to it.
“You’re over time, young ladies, half an hour,” she said in her abrupt way. “A bad example to the new pupils, and to your juniors. Postpone any more of this till to-morrow night. To your rooms!”
They scattered to their rooms. Mrs. Cupp’s word was law. She was Dr. Prescott’s first assistant, and had the interior management of the school in her very capable hands. There was nothing very motherly or comforting about Mrs. Cupp. But Nan decided that Mrs. Cupp was not really wholly unsympathetic after all.
Nan and Bess hurried back to Number Seven, Corridor Four. All Bess’ anger and tears had evaporated, and she was full of talk and laughter. Moreover, she and Nan ate every crumb of the shoe-box lunch before they went to bed!
Lessons were not taken up for several days after Nan Sherwood and Bess Harley arrived at Lakeview Hall. This gave them an opportunity for getting acquainted with the other girls and their strange surroundings, as well as the routine of the school.
At this time of the year the rising bell was at six and breakfast at seven. The girls could either spend the hour before breakfast in study or out-of-door recreation. The grounds connected with the Hall comprised all the plateau at the top of the bluff, with a mile of shore at its foot. At one place a roughly built, crooked flight of steps all the way down the face of the bluff, offered a path to the boathouse. By day that sprawling stone building was merely a place to shelter the school’s many boats, and a boatkeeper was on hand to attend to the girls’ needs. But at night, so it was whispered, the boathouse had a ghostly occupant.
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Nan Sherwood, with laughter, when she was told this. “What kind of a ghost?”
“A black ghost—all black,” declared May Winslow, who seemed to be of a rather superstitious nature.
“You mean the ghost of a colored man?” demanded Nan.
“Oh! nobody ever saw his face. But he’s all in black,” Miss Winslow stated.
“Well! that’s a novelty, at least,” chuckled Nan. “Usually ghosts are sheeted in white, with phosphorescent eyes and clammy hands.”
“Goodness!” gasped May. “Nobody ever got near enough to him to let him touch her! I should say not!”
“And why should he haunt that boathouse?” was Nan’s further demand.
“Oh! we don’t know that.”
“Ever been a murder committed there?”
“Why! how you talk! A murder at Lakeview Hall? The idea!”
“All the ghosts I ever heard of were supposed to be the disembodied spirits either of persons who met with some catastrophe, or who committed a capital crime. They usually haunt the spot where the tragedy occurred. Now, my dear, what did this poor, black ghost do in life that he has to haunt that boathouse?”
“Oh, you can laugh!” exclaimed May, rather offended. “But if you ever see the ghost you won’t be so light-minded about it.”
And, oddly enough, May Winslow was a true prophet in this case; but Nan Sherwood, at the time, only laughed.
She and Bess, on the morning following their arrival at the school, went down to the trunk room to get their possessions. Mrs. Cupp abrogated to herself the right of search for, and seizure of, all contraband goods brought to the school by the pupils. The trunks must be unpacked under her eye—and a watchful eye it was!
Many a foolish or unwise mother allowed her daughter to wear garments or articles of adornment that Mrs. Cupp did not approve. And, as has before been said, at Lakeview Hall Mrs. Cupp’s will was law.
“No, Miss Annie, I told you last year that those low-cut garments were not fit for winter wear in this climate. You should have told your aunt that I disapproved.”
“Idid,” snapped the black-eyed girl who was thus addressed. “But auntie says she has worn them all her life, and there is no reason why I should not.”
“Oh, yes there is. I am the reason,” returned Mrs. Cupp, grimly. “Leave those things in your trunk, or return them. And tell your aunt that if she does not send you suitable and warm under-garments for the winter, that I will buy them and the cost will appear upon your quarterly bill.
“Now, Lettie Roberts! you know very well that no girl can wear a heel on her shoes like that in this school. What would Miss Gleason say?” Miss Gleason was the physical instructor. “If you wish to retain those shoes I will have the heels lowered.”
“Oh, mercy me, Mrs. Cupp!” remonstrated the victim this time. “Those are my brand new dancing pumps!”
“You’ll not dance in these pumps here,” responded the matron, firmly. “Make up your mind quickly.”
“Heel ’em!” shot in Lettie, who knew of old that Mrs. Cupp was adamant. “Oh, dear!”
“No use trying to balk Mrs. Cupp,” Laura Polk had warned Nan and Bess. “It would be just as wise to butt your heads against a brick wall to make an impression on the wall!”
Mrs. Cupp had a sharp eye for anything the girls desired to take out of their trunks. And that which went back into the trunks remained in her care, for she insisted upon keeping the trunk keys as well as the key of the trunk-room.
“What’s this you have buried at the bottom of your trunk, Nancy?” she asked Nan, sharply, when she came to a long, narrow box, made very neatly of cabinet wood by the skilful fingers of Tom Sherwood.
“Mercy, Nan!” whispered Bess, peering over herchum’s shoulder, “it looks horribly like a baby’s coffin.”
“I—I’d rather you didn’t take that out, Mrs. Cupp,” said Nan, hastily.
“What?” repeated the lady, eyeing Nan suspiciously through her glasses.
“No, ma’am! please don’t take it out,” fluttered Nan.
“You wish to let it remain in my care, then, do you?” asked Mrs. Cupp, drily.
“Ye—yes, ma’am,” Nan murmured.
Bess’ eyes were big with wonder. Her chum had a secret that was not known to her!
Some of the other girls were listeners, too. Linda Riggs was impatiently awaiting her turn to have Mrs. Cupp examine the contents of her trunk. She tossed her head and said, in scarcely a muffled tone, to Cora Courtney:
“That Sherwood girl has probably succeeded in taking something and hiding it in her trunk. I told you, Cora, how she came so near getting away with my new bag when I was not looking.”
“Why, her bag is just like yours, Linda,” said Cora.
“Nonsense! They’re not alike, at all,” cried the ill-natured Linda. “She couldn’t afford to own such a bag honestly. Mine cost nearly forty dollars.”
“Well, maybe the Sherwood girl has more moneythan we think,” whispered Cora. “I saw her give Mrs. Cupp some bank notes to take care of.”
“Stolen!” exclaimed Linda.
“Well, she has them, at least,” said Cora, who was poor herself but loved money, and was always making friends with richer girls that she might share in their spending money. “You know, we want to have some bang-up banquets this fall, and parties and the like. Somebody’s got to furnish the ‘sinews of war’—and you can’t do it all, Linda. Better make friends with Sherwood.”
“I’ll do nothing of the kind!” cried Linda.
But Cora was a crafty girl. She herself said nothing and did nothing to offend Nan or Bess. It became common report, however, that Nan Sherwood had something in her trunk of which she would rather go without the use than show to Mrs. Cupp. And, of course, that aroused general curiosity.
Bess, on her part, felt not a little hurt. She was sure there was nothing she would not tell or show Nan. She did not speak of the matter to her chum, for Nan pointedly avoided it. But it troubled Bess, when the other girls tried to pump her about the box in Nan’s trunk, that she was unable to look knowing and refuse to tell.
“I don’t know anything about it,” she snapped. “She doesn’t tell me her secrets.”
“Ho!” cried Laura. “What’s the use of beingchums with a girl who locks up the innermost recesses of her heart against you—and her trunk, as well? Why! I and my chum even borrow each other’s chewing gum!” she added with her usual exaggeration.
Nan, however, would not be offended at anything Bess said, and was so helpful and kind that her chum could not long retain even a shadow of unfriendliness. During the first days of school the two friends from Tillbury gathered a number of girls about them; some novices like themselves; others, girls of about their own age who had spent from one to three terms at the Hall previous to this fall semester.
Laura Polk, the red-haired joker, was on the same corridor as Nan and Bess, so naturally they saw a good deal of her. And she was always good fun.
Grace Mason and her room-mate, flaxen-haired Lillie Nevin, were two more who soon took shelter under Nan Sherwood’s wing. The more boisterous girls harassed Grace and Lillie at times, and yet they courted them, too, for Grace’s parents and brother lived on the outskirts of Freeling and she could communicate through Walter much more easily with the outside world than could many of her schoolmates.
Then there was “Procrastination Boggs,” as the queer girl from Wauhegan had been nicknamed.She joined forces with the girls of Number Seven, Corridor Four, right at the start.
Nan and Bess, in fact, found themselves in a very busy world indeed. Lessons, study, gymnasium work, boating, walking, tennis, basket-ball, and a dozen other activities, occupied their days. And sometimes at night,—even after the solemn tolling of the half-past nine curfew,—slippered feet ran about the dim corridors with as little noise as the mice made behind the wainscoting. Bands of whispering, giggling girls gathered in the various rooms and told stories, played games, held bare-foot dances, and ate goodies, when they were supposed to be deeply engaged in the preparation of the morrow’s work, or long after they should have retired.
Nan was careful to break no important rules, nor did she allow careless Bess to fall into the company of girls who broke them. Of innocent amusement there was plenty at Lakeview Hall.
Both chums were fond of boating and other aquatic sports. Lake Huron, of course, was entirely different from the millpond at home; but they knew how to row and paddle, and there were plenty of boats and canoes to use here, for the asking.
And it was because of their delight in paddling a canoe that Nan Sherwood and Bess Harley first fell into a real adventure at Lakeview Hall.