"What does this mean, Heavy Jennie?" demanded Helen, pinching the very comfortable arm of their fleshy friend.
"What does that mean? Ouch, Helen! You know you're pinching something when you pinchme."
"That's why I like to. No fun in trying to make an impression on bones, you know."
"But it doesn't hurt bones so much," grumbled Jennie. "Remember what the fruit-stand man printed on his sign: 'If you musta pincha da fruit, pincha da cocoanut.' You can't so easy bruise bony folk, Helen."
"You are dodging the issue, Heavy," declared Helen. "What does this mean?"
"What does what mean?" demanded the fleshy girl, grinning widely again.
"How came you here, of course?" Ruth put in, smiling upon their gay and usually thoughtless friend. "You said you did not think you could come to Ardmore."
"And you had conditions to make up if you did come," declared Helen.
"I made 'em up," said Jennie, laughing.
"And you're here ahead of us! Oh, Heavy, what sport!" cried Helen, undertaking to pinch the plump girl again.
"Now, that's enough of that," said Jennie Stone. "I have feelings, as well as other folk, Helen Cameron, despite my name. Have a heart!"
"We are so glad to see you, Heavy," said Ruth. "You mustn't mind Helen's exuberance."
"And you never said a word about coming here when you wrote to us down South," Helen said, eyeing the fleshy girl curiously.
"I didn't know what to do," confessed Jennie Stone. "I talked it over with Aunt Kate. She agreed with me that, if I had finished school, I'd put on about five pounds a month, and that's all Iwoulddo."
"Goodness!" gasped Ruth and Helen, together.
"Yes," said Heavy, nodding with emphasis. "That's what I did the first month. Nothing to do, you see, but eat and sleep. If I'd had to go to work——"
"But couldn't you find something to do?" demanded the energetic Ruth.
"At Lighthouse Point? You know just how lazy a spot that is. And in winter in the city it would be worse. So I determined to come here."
"To keep from getting fatter!" cried Helen. "A new reason for coming to college."
"Well," said Jennie, seriously, "I missed the gym work and I missed being uncomfortable."
"Uncomfortable?" gasped Ruth and Helen.
"Yes. You know, my father's a big man, and so are my older brothers big. Everything in our house is big and well stuffed and comfortable—chairs and beds and all. I never was comfortable in my bed at Briarwood."
"Horrible!" cried Helen, while Ruth laughed heartily.
"Andhere!" went on Heavy, lugubriously. "Wait till you see. Do you know, all they give us here iscotsto sleep on?Cots, mind! Goodness! when I try to turn over I roll right out on the floor. You ought to see my sides already, how black-and-blue they are. I've been here two nights."
"Why did you come so early?"
"So as to try to get used to the food and the beds," groaned Heavy. "But I never will. One teacher already has advised me about my diet. She says vegetables are best for me. I ate a peck of string beans this noon for lunch—strings and all—and I expect you can pick basting threads out of me almost anywhere!"
"The teacher didn't advise you to eatallthe vegetables there were, did she?" asked Ruth, as they climbed the stairs.
"She did not signify the amount. I just ate till I couldn't get down another one. I sha'n't want to see another string bean for some time."
Ruth and Helen easily found the rooms that had been drawn for them the June previous. Of course, they were not the best rooms in the hall, for the seniors had first choice, and then the juniors and sophomores had their innings before the freshmen had a chance.
But there was a door between Ruth's and Helen's rooms, as they had hoped, and Jennie's room was just across the corridor.
"We Sweetbriars will stick together, all right," said the fleshy girl. "For defence and offence, if necessary."
"You evidently expect to have a strenuous time here, Heavy," laughed Ruth.
"No telling," returned Jennie Stone, wagging her head. "I fancy there are some 'cut-ups' among the sophs who will try to make our sweet young lives miserable. That Edie Phelps, for instance." She told them how the sophomores had met the new girl, Rebecca Frayne, and why.
"Oh, dear!" said Ruth. "But that was all onmyaccount. We shall have to be particularly nice to Miss Frayne. I hope she's on our corridor."
"Do you suppose they will haze you, Ruth, just because you wrote that scenario?" asked Helen, somewhat troubled.
"There's no hazing at Ardmore," laughed Ruth. "They can't bother me. 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me!'" she singsonged.
"Just the same," Jennie said, morosely, "that Edie Phelps has a sharp tongue."
"We, too, have tongues," proclaimed Helen, who had no intention of being put upon.
"Now, girls, we want to take just what is handed us good-naturedly," Ruth advised. "We are freshmen. Next year we will be sophomores, and can take it out on the new girls then," and she laughed. "You know, we've all been through it at Briarwood."
"Goodness, yes!" agreed Helen. "It can't be as bad at college as it was during our first term at Briarwood Hall."
"This Edie Phelps can't be as mean as The Fox 'useter was,' I suppose," added Jennie Stone. "Besides, I fancy the sophs need us freshmen—our good will and help, I mean. The two lower classes here have to line up against the juniors and seniors."
"Oh, dear, me," sighed Ruth. "I hoped we had come here to study, not to fight."
"Pooh!" said the fleshy girl, "where do you go in this world that you don't have to fight for your rights? You never get something for nothing."
However, the possibility of trouble disturbed their minds but slightly. For the rest of the day the trio were very busy. At least, Ruth and Helen were busy arranging their rooms and unpacking, and Jennie Stone was busy watching them.
They went to the registrar's office that day, as this was required. Otherwise, they were in their rooms, after their baggage was delivered, occupied until almost dinner time. Heavy had been on the ground long enough, as she said, to know most of the ropes. They were supposed to dress rather formally for dinner, although not more than two-thirds of the girls had arrived.
There were in Dare Hall alone as many pupils as had attended Briarwood altogether. This was, indeed, a much larger school life on which they were entering.
So many of the girls they saw were older than themselves—and the trio of girls had been among the oldest girls at Briarwood during their last semester.
"Why, we're onlykids," sighed Helen. "There's a girl on this corridor—at the other end, thank goodness!—who looks old enough to be a teacher."
"Miss Comstock," said Heavy. "I know. She's a senior. There are no teachers rooming at Dare. Only the housekeeper downstairs. But you'll find a senior at the head of each table—and Miss Comstock looks awfully stern."
Ruth and Helen found the rooms they were to occupy rather different from those they had chummed in at Briarwood. In the first place, these rooms were smaller, and the furniture was very plain. As Jennie had warned them, there were only cots to sleep upon—very nice cots, it was true, and there was a heavy coverlet for each, to turn the cots into divans in the daytime.
"I tell you what we can do," Ruth suggested at the start. "Let's make one room the study, and both sleep in the other."
"Bully idea," agreed Helen.
They proceeded to do this, the result being a very plain sleeping room, indeed, but a well-furnished study. They had brought with them all the pennants and other keepsakes from Briarwood, and sofa pillows and cushions for the chairs, and innumerable pictures.
Before night the study looked as homelike as the old room had at the preparatory school. They had rugs, too, and one big lounging chair, purchased second-hand, that Heavy had, of course, occupied most of the afternoon.
"Well! I hope you've finished at last," sighed the fleshy girl when the warning bell for dinner rang. "I'm about tired out."
"You should be," agreed Ruth, commiseratingly. "You've helped so much."
"Advising is harder than moving furniture and tacking up pictures," proclaimed Jennie. "Brain-fag is the trouble with me and hunger."
"We admit the final symptom," said Helen. "But if your brain is ever fagged, Heavy, it will only be from thinking up new and touching menus. Come on, now, we're going to scramble into some fresh frocks. You go and do the same, Miss Lazybones."
Ruth and Helen were much more amply supplied with frocks of a somewhat dressy order than when they began a semester at Briarwood Hall. Their wardrobes here were well filled, and of course there was no supervision of what they wore as there had been at the preparatory school.
When they went downstairs to the dining-room with Jennie Stone, they found they had made no mistake in "putting their best foot forward," as Helen called it.
"My! I feel quite as though I were going to a party," Ruth confessed.
The girls rustled through the corridors and down the wide stairways, laughing and talking, many of the freshmen, it was evident, already having made friends.
"There's that girl," whispered Jennie Stone, suddenly.
"What girl?" asked Helen.
"Oh! the girl with all the luggage," laughed Ruth.
"Yes," said the fleshy girl. "What was her name?"
"Rebecca Frayne," said Ruth, who had a good memory.
She bowed to the rather over-dressed freshman. She saw that nobody was walking with Rebecca Frayne.
"I hope she sits at our table," Ruth added.
"Of course," Helen rejoined, with a smile, "Ruth has already spied somebody to be good to."
"Shucks!" said Jennie. "I don't think she'd make a particularly pleasant addition to our party."
"What doesthatmatter?" demanded Helen, roguishly. "Ruth is always picking up the sore-eyed kittens."
"I think that is unkind," returned Ruth, shaking her head. "Maybe Miss Frayne is a very nice girl."
"I wonder what she's got in all those bags and the big trunk?" said Jennie. "I see she's wearing the same dress she traveled in."
"I wager she misses her maid," sighed Helen. "Can't dress without one, I s'pose."
But there were too many other girls to watch and to comment on for the trio to give much attention to Rebecca Frayne. Ruth, however, said, with a little laugh:
"I must feel some interest in her. Her initials are the same as mine."
"And her arrival certainly took the curse off yours, my dear," Jennie agreed. "Edie Phelps and her crowd were laying for you and no mistake."
"I wonder if we shouldn't eschew all slang now that we have come to Ardmore?" Helen suggested demurely.
"You set the example then, my lady!" cried Heavy.
Miss Comstock, the very severe looking senior, sat at the table at which the Briarwood trio of freshmen found their numbers; but Miss Frayne was at the housekeeper's table. There were ten or twelve girls at each table and throughout the meal a pleasant hum of voices filled the room.
Ruth and Helen, not to mention their fleshy chum, were soon at their ease with their neighbors; nor did Miss Comstock prove such a bugaboo as they feared. Although the senior was a particularly silent girl, she had a pleasant smile and was no wet blanket upon the enjoyment of the dinner. At least, she did not serve as a wet blanket upon Jennie Stone. The fleshy girl's appetite betrayed the fact that she had been stinted at noon, and that a diet of string beans was scarcely a satisfactory one.
As they left the dining-room and came out into the wide, well-lighted entrance hall of the house, a lady just entering bowed to Jennie Stone.
"There she is!" groaned the fleshy girl. "Caught in the act!"
"Who is she, Heavy?" demanded Helen, in an undertone.
"She looks nice," observed Ruth.
"Miss Cullam. She's the one that advised the string beans," declared Jennie out of the corner of her mouth. Then she added, most cordially: "Oh! how do you do! These are my two chums from Briarwood—Ruth Fielding and Helen Cameron. Miss Cullam, girls."
The teacher, who was rather elderly, but very brisk and neat, if not wholly attractive, approached smiling.
"You will meet me in mathematics, young ladies," she said, shaking hands with the two introduced freshmen. "And how are you to-night, Miss Stone? Have you stuck to your vegetable diet, as I advised?"
Heavy made her jolly, round face seem as long as possible, and groaned hollowly.
"Oh, Miss Cullam!" she said, "I believe I could have stuck to the diet, if——"
"Well, if what?" demanded the teacher.
"If the diet would only stick tome. But it doesn't. I atepecksof string beans for lunch, and by the middle of the afternoon I felt like a castaway after two weeks upon a desert island."
"Nonsense, Miss Stone!" exclaimed the teacher, yet laughing too. Heavy was so ridiculous that it was impossible not to be amused. "You should practise abstinence. Really, you are the very fattest girl at Ardmore, I do believe."
"That sounds horrid!" declared Jennie with sudden vigor, and she did not look pleased.
"You may as well face the truth, my dear," said the mathematics teacher, eyeing the distressing curves of the fleshy girl without prejudice. "Here are upwards of a thousand girls—or will be when all have arrived and registered. And you will be locally famous."
"Oh, don't!" groaned Ruth.
"Poor Heavy!" gasped Helen.
Miss Cullam uttered a short laugh.
"Your friends evidently love you, my dear," she said, patting the fleshy girl's plump cheek. "But you want to make new friends—you wish to be admired, I know. It will not be pleasant to gain the reputation of being Ardmore's heavyweight, will it?"
"It sounds pretty bad," admitted Heavy, coming out of her momentary slough of despond. "But we all have our little troubles, don't we, Miss Cullam?"
Somehow this question seemed to quench the teacher of mathematics' good spirits. A cloud settled upon her countenance, and she nodded seriously.
"We all have; true enough, Miss Stone," she said. "And I hope you, as pupils at Ardmore, will never suffer such disturbance of mind as I, a teacher, sometimes do."
Ruth, who had started up the stairway next to the teacher, put a friendly hand upon Miss Cullam's arm. "I hope we three will never add to your burdens, my dear Miss Cullam," she whispered.
The instructor flashed a rather wondering look at the girl of the Red Mill; then she smiled. It was a grouty person, indeed, who could look into Ruth Fielding's frank countenance and not return her smile.
"Bless you! I have heard of you already, Ruth Fielding. I have no idea I shall be troubled by you or your friends." They had fallen behind the others a few steps. "But we never can tell. Since last term—well!"
Much, evidently, was on Miss Cullam's mind; yet she kept step with Ruth when they came to the corridor on which the rooms of the three Briarwoods opened. Ruth could always find something pleasant to say. This woman with the care-graved countenance smiled whimsically as she listened, keeping at the girl's shoulder.
Evidently somewhat oppressed by the attentions of the instructor, Helen and Heavy had disappeared into the fleshy girl's room.
"Do come in and see how nicely we have fixed our sitting-room—study, I mean, of course," and Ruth laughed, opening the door.
"Looks homelike," confessed Miss Cullam. Then, with a startled glance around the room, she murmured: "Why, it's the very room!"
"What is that you say?" asked Ruth, curiously.
"Do you know who had this room last year?"
"Of course I haven't the first idea," returned the girl of the Red Mill.
"Miss Rolff."
"Do I know her?" asked Ruth, somewhat puzzled.
"She left before the end of the term. I—I am not sure just what the matter was with her. But she is connected in my mind with a great misfortune."
"Indeed, Miss Cullam?" said the sympathetic Ruth.
It was, perhaps, the sympathy in her tone that urged the instructor to confide her trouble to a strange girl—a freshman, at that!
"I hope I shall never have the same fears and doubts regarding you and your friends, Miss Fielding, that I have felt about some of these girls who are now sophomores—and some of the juniors, too."
"Oh, Miss Cullam! What do you mean?"
"Well, I'll tell you, my dear," the teacher said, taking the comfortable chair at Ruth's gestured recommendation, as the girl switched on the electricity. "You seem like an above-the-average sensible girl——"
Ruth laughed at that, but she dimpled, too, and Miss Cullam joined in the laughter.
"Some of these girls were mere flyaways," she said. "But not many, after all. Girls who come as far as college, even to the freshman course in college, usually have something in their pretty noddles besides ideas for dressing their hair.
"Well, I will confide in you, as I say, because I have a fancy to. I like you. Listen to the troubles of a poor mathematics instructor."
"Yes, Miss Cullam," said Ruth, demurely.
"You see, my dear," said Miss Cullam, who had a whimsical way about her that Ruth had begun to delight in, "after all, we college instructors are all necessarily of the race of watch dogs."
"Oh, Miss Cullam!"
"Our girls are put upon their honor and are in the main worthy of our confidence. But we have experiences that show us how frail human virtue is.
"For instance, there are examinations. A most trying necessity are examinations. They come mainly toward the close of the college year, and a few of our girls are not prepared to pass.
"Last year I felt that some of my freshmen and sophomores could not possibly comply with the mathematical requirements. When I received from the printers my copies of the questions to be proposed to the classes I really felt that a few of my girls were going to have a hard time," and she smiled again, yet there was still trouble in her eyes.
"I chanced to be in the library when I received the papers. You have not seen our library yet, have you, Miss Fielding?"
"No, Miss Cullam. You know, Helen and I arrived only this afternoon at Ardmore."
"That is so. Well, the library is a very beautifully furnished building. It was a gift from certain alumni. I was alone in the reception-room when I examined the papers, and being called suddenly to a duty and not wishing to take the papers with me, I rolled them up and thrust them into a vase standing upon the table. When I returned in a few minutes, still hurried by a task before me, I found that I had thrust the papers so far into the small-mouthed vase that I could not reach them. Quite a ridiculous situation, was it not?
"But now the plot thickens," went on the teacher, with a sigh. "The papers were safe enough there, of course. The vase was a very beautiful and valuable silver one, and had its place of honor on that table. I could not stop to retrieve the question papers with a pair of tongs—as I might, had I not been hurried. When I returned armed with the tongs in the morning——"
"Yes, Miss Cullam?" rejoined Ruth, interestedly, as the teacher paused in her story.
"The vase—and, of course, the question papers—was gone," said the lady, in a sepulchral tone.
"Oh!"
"And almost all the girls I had marked for failure in mathematics went through the examination with colors flying!"
"Oh!" exclaimed Ruth again, and quite blankly.
"Do you see the terrible suspicion that has been eating at my mind ever since? There happened to be other unfortunate matters connected with the disappearance of the vase, too.Ithas never been found. One of the very freshmen who I feared would fail in the examination left the college under a cloud."
"Oh, Miss Cullam!" gasped Ruth. "Is she suspected of stealing the vase—and the examination papers?"
"I scarcely know what to say in answer to that," said Miss Cullam, gravely. "It seems that one of the sororities was initiating candidates on that night. One of the—er—'stunts,' as they call their ridiculous ceremonies, included the filching of this vase after dark and its burial somewhere on Bliss Island. So Dr. Milroth later informed me.
"The girl chosen for this ridiculous performance, Miss Rolff, who occupied this very room, was found at daybreak wandering alone upon the island in a hysterical condition. She insisted upon leaving the college immediately, before I had discovered the absence of the vase and the missing papers.
"I felt that I could not arouse suspicion in Dr. Milroth's mind by mentioning the papers. I secured copies from the printer. Of course, it is all ancient history now, my dear," ended the mathematics teacher, with a sigh. "But you see, suspicion once fastened upon my mind, it still troubles me."
"But what became of the poor girl?" asked Ruth, sympathetically.
"That I cannot tell you," Miss Cullam said, rising. "She has not returned this year, and I understand that Dr. Milroth lost trace of her."
Just why the teacher of mathematics had taken Ruth Fielding into her confidence upon this rather curious event, it would be hard to say. Teachers are human like other people, and perhaps sometimes prone to gossip.
However, Ruth felt that it was a confidence, and she did not mention the matter of the missing examination papers to her chum or to Jennie Stone. The other Briarwood girls were the only members of the freshman class Ruth was likely to be intimate with for some days.
Friendships are not made so quickly at college as at smaller schools. There were so many girls that it took some time for the trio to adjust themselves and to become acquainted with their mates.
In the morning they went again to the registrar's office, and there they met Miss Dexter, who was appointed to escort them about, show them the college offices, the bookstore, and introduce them to such of the instructors as came in the path of the new girls.
Of course, their tuition fees—one hundred and seventy-five dollars each—for the year had been already paid. Their board would be nine dollars weekly, and all books, stationery, gymnastic suits and supplies, as well as medical and hospital fees (if they chanced to be ill) would be extra.
There were only a few simple rules of behavior to note. If a girl is not well trained in ladylike demeanor before arriving at the college age she is, of course, hopeless. The faculty have other things to do besides watching the manners as well as the mental attributes, of the students.
Ruth and her friends learned that they were not to leave the college grounds before six in the morning.
"And who'd want to?" demanded Heavy. "That's the best time to sleep."
However, the fleshy girl soon learned that if she was to have a reasonable time for breakfast she must be up betimes. The meal was served from seven to a quarter to eight. Chapel was at eight-thirty, but not compulsory. Recitations began at nine and lunch was at twelve.
Recitations and lectures (these latter did not interest our freshmen, for they had no lectures the first year) ended at three-thirty, when, all the girls were supposed to take gymnastics of some kind. Otherwise, their time was their own until dinner at six o'clock.
The girls had the time free from seven till seven-thirty. The following two hours were those devoted to quiet study (or should be) in their own rooms, or in the reference department of the library. At ten all were supposed to retire.
The students might leave the grounds at any time during the day, but never in the evening without a chaperon. These rules and requirements seemed easy enough to the trio from Briarwood Hall, used as they were to the far stricter oversight of the teachers in the preparatory institution.
More girls appeared at Ardmore that day, and the one following would see the opening of the semester and, as Jennie Stone said, "the buckling down to real work." A notice was posted on the bulletin boards already commanding all freshmen to meet at Hoskin Hall after dinner that evening, signed by the president of the sophomore class.
"What'sshegot to do withus?" Helen demanded, with a sniff.
"Aren't we allowed to run our own class affairs here?" Heavy asked.
"I fancy not," Ruth rejoined. "Miss Dexter told me that the sophs and freshies were usually lined up against the two older classes. The sophs need us, and we need them."
"I have an idea," said Heavy, with a warning shake of her head, "that some of the sophs don't care so much for us."
The trio were returning from the college hall as they chatted. Helen suddenly exclaimed:
"Girls! did you ever see so many tam-o'-shanters in your little lives? And such a wealth of colors?"
It was true that every girl in sight (and there were "just hundreds!" to quote Heavy again), unless she were bareheaded, wore a tam-o'-shanter.
"The most popular thing in head covering at Ardmore this year, that is sure," said Ruth.
"Oh! will you look at the one that Frayne girl is wearing?" Helen gasped.
"Goodness!" said Heavy. "Looks like an Italian sunset."
"Or a badly scrambled egg," put in Helen. "There! I believe that girl would look a fright whatever she put on."
"She can't help her taste, poor girl," Ruth said.
"My!" sighed Heavy. "I like to hear you talk, Ruth. You're as full of excuses for everybody criticised as a chestnut is of meat," and she nibbled one of the nuts in question as she spoke. Then:
"Wow! Oh, the nasty thing!"
Helen laughed uproariously. "Something besides meat in that chestnut, Heavy. Did it squirm much?"
"Don't ask me," said the fleshy girl, gloomily. "Of such is life! 'I never owned a gay gazelle——'"
"Cut it out. You never owned a gazelle of any kind," said Helen. "You know you never did."
It was just here that the trio came upon a group of girls of whom Edith Phelps was evidently the leader. It was opposite the gymnasium, under the wide-spreading oaks that gave shade to that quarter of the campus. The Briarwood girls had been about to enter the gymnasium building to look around.
Edith and her friends were mostly in gymnasium costumes. They had been tossing the medicine ball; but it was plain that they had gathered here near the path the three freshmen friends followed, for a purpose.
"Oh, here comes the leading lady!" cried Edith Phelps, in a high and affected voice. "Get set! Camera!"
The girls, or most of them, struck most ridiculous attitudes at Edie's word, while an oblong, black box suddenly appeared, affixed upon a tripod, and May MacGreggor, who was out for fun as much as any of the sophomores, began to turn a tiny crank on one side of the box.
"Hi! what are you trying to do—you fat person there?" demanded Edie, excitedly, imitating a movie director, and waving back the amazed and somewhat angry Jennie Stone. "Want to crab the film?"
"Oh, the mean things!" gasped Helen, growing as red as though the joke were aimed directly at herself.
"Cracky!" murmured the fleshy girl, who couldn't help seeing the ridiculous side of it. "Isn't that funny?"
At the moment, too, a thin little tune began to wander from the black box, none other than "The Wearing of the Green." Inside the box was one of those little, old-fashioned Swiss music boxes, and May was industriously turning the crank.
"Register fear, Miss Fielding!" shouted Edith, energetically. "Fear, I say! Don't you realize that you are about to be flung over a cliff and that a mad bull is waiting bel-o-o-w to catch you on his horns? Close up of the bull, please!"
Ruth had been first surprised, then not a little displeased; but she knew instinctively if she showed that this buffoonry offended and troubled her it would only be repeated again and again.
Much better able than her chum, Helen Cameron, to control her features, she began now to smile broadly.
"Girls!" she said aloud to her two friends, "it must be that that girl knows Mr. Grimes personally or has seen him at work. You remember Mr. Grimes, the Alectrion director who filmed our play at Briarwood?"
"And was so nasty to Hazel Gray? I should say!" exclaimed Jennie, instantly falling in with Ruth's attempt to pass the incident off as a joke.
"I thinkshe'snasty-mean," muttered Helen, her black eyes snapping.
"If you played that tune while making a film for me, Miss MacGreggor, I should want to jig," Heavy cried, and started to do a few ridiculous steps in front of the black box.
Ruth continued to smile, too, saying to Edith Phelps: "You might have warned us of this. I'd have liked to primp a little before posing for the camera."
The other girls laughed. It did not take much to make them laugh, and it is possible that they laughed as much at Edie as with her. But as the trio of freshmen went on toward Dare Hall, Ruth shook her head doubtfully.
"What's the matter, Ruthie?" asked Helen, squeezing her arm. "The mean things!"
"I wonder," murmured Ruth.
"You wonder what?" demanded Helen.
Ruth sighed. "I guess fame isn't always an asset," she said.
Ruth knew better than to show anger over any such silly joke. If she was to be made the laughing stock of her class by the sophomores, she might as well face it and bear the cross good-naturedly.
Ruth was as sensitive as any refined girl. It hurt her to be ridiculed. But she had not spent years at boarding school without learning that the best way—indeed, the only way—to bear successfully such indignity is to ignore it. That is, to ignore the fun poked at one as far as possible. To bear the jokes with a smile. So she would not allow her friends to comment much upon this scene before the gymnasium building.
She had never given herself airs because of her success in writing scenarios. Another girl might have done so. But Ruth was naturally modest, and had never really ceased to be surprised at her own success.
The new scenario she was at work upon, the scenes of which were laid at the Red Mill, was born of an idea she had evolved when her attention had first been turned to motion-picture writing.
Mr. Hammond, her kind friend and the president of the Alectrion Film Corporation, had advised her to postpone the use of this idea until she had tried her apprentice hand on other and simpler scenarios. The time seemed ripe now, however, for the writing of "Crossed Wires," and he had encouraged her to go ahead.
All the visible effect Edith Phelps' joke had upon Ruth was to send her to the unfinished scenario. After returning from the college offices on this occasion she worked on her play until lunch time.
"There's too much new to see and to do for you to pore over letter writing, Ruth," Helen declared, misunderstanding her friend's occupation. "We want to see Ardmore. We want to go out on the lake if we can get a boat. We've got to see the gym and the library. And to-night we must turn up at this meeting, it seems, and see what Miss Dunstan, the soph president, has to say to us freshies."
"Oh, I want to go out on the lake!" cried Ruth, agreeing. "And I want to explore that island."
"What island?" demanded Jennie, coming into the chums' study.
"Bliss Island."
"'Tisn't part of the college grounds," said the fleshy girl.
"Don't care. Want to see it," declared Ruth. "I hope we can get a boat. I didn't see many in use this morning."
"Some of the girls own their own. Especially canoes," said Jennie Stone. "But it'sthething to make the 'eight.' Let me tell you, us Ardmores are supposed to be some rowists! Our first eight beat the Gillings College first eight last June."
"We'll all try for the eight then," Helen said.
"Andyou, Jennie?" asked Ruth, mildly.
"Oh,me!"
"String beans for yours, Heavy," Helen cried, clapping her hands. "You'll have to diet on them until you have reduced to little more than a string yourself if you expect to make the eight."
"Bet I could do it," grumbled Heavy.
"A bet's a bet!" cried Helen. "I take you."
"Don't be rude, girls," advised Ruth. "You sound like regular, sure-enough gamblers. And, anyway, Heavy will never be able to make the eight. She might as well pay her wager now."
"Oh! oh! oh!" laughed Helen. "A palpable hit!"
"You just see!" said Heavy, firmly. "I'll show you."
"My dear," Ruth said, "if you show us a sylph-like form in time to make the freshman eight——"
"It will be the eighth wonder of the world," finished Helen.
Jennie tossed her head. "I don't know about the sylph-like form, but at least I mean to possess a slender figure when I have followed Miss Cullam's advice on diet. You'll see!"
"Poor Heavy!" groaned Helen. "She is letting herself in for a most awful time, and no mistake."
After luncheon the three girls set forth to explore the place.
"If I keep this up I'll need nothing else to get me thin. We have tramped miles," the fleshy girl announced at length. "Oh! my poor, poor feet!"
"Wear sensible shoes, then," said Helen, who was the very last person to follow her own advice on this point.
"Easy enough to say," groaned Jennie. "There ain't any such an animal! You know that in this day and generation shoe makers have ceased to make sensible shoes. I look at 'em in the shop windows," pursued the aching girl, "and I wonder what sort of foot the human pedal extremity will become in a generation or two. Those pointed toes!
"Why," declared the suddenly warmed up Jennie Stone, "they tell us about a two-toed sloth living in Central and South America. Believeme! the present-day shoemaker seems to have secured a last to fit aone-toed sloth."
"I don't know about the number of their toes," Ruth said, laughing; "but many of those who wear the fancy shoes aresloths, all right."
They had looked over the library before this, and walked down past Hoskin and Hemmingway Halls on the west side of the campus, and so reached the lake. There were some girls at the boathouse, and a few craft were out. It was possible for the three friends to get a boat and Ruth and Helen rowed, with Heavy lazily reclining in the stern.
"Beginning that strenuous life that is to reduce your weight, Heavy?" questioned Helen.
"I am practising deep breathing," Jennie said. "They say that helps a lot."
They headed the light skiff directly for Bliss Island. It was not more than a mile off shore, and was a beautiful place. At the landing they saw several girls whom they knew were sophomores, for among them was May MacGreggor.
"Here are some more of Cook's Trippers," said the Scotch girl, gaily. "Seeing the sights,mes infantes?"
"Trying to," Jennie announced. "But you're really not so bad looking, Miss MacGreggor. I wouldn't call you a 'sight.'"
"Now, that will be all of that, Miss Stone!" exclaimed the sophomore, but her brown eyes danced as the other girls laughed. "I believe you three girls are Briarwoods, are you not?"
"Yes," Helen said.
"I can believe it," said May. "I have felt the briers. Now, let us call a truce."
"With all my heart, Miss MacGreggor," Ruth said quickly.
"You're a good little thing!" returned the Scotch girl. "I know your heart is big enough. And we sophs really shouldn't nag you freshies, you know, for we must pull together against the seniors and juniors. But you'll hear about that to-night."
"Thank you, Miss MacGreggor," Ruth said. "And now that we are at this island, would you mind telling us where the Stone Face is situated?"
"Ah! one of the wonders of the place," said May. "And who told you about the Stone Face, Freshie?"
"I have heard it is well worth seeing," said Ruth, demurely.
"I will be your escort," said May.
They found the Scotch girl very companionable. She led them up a rugged path through the trees and around the rocks.
"And did that girl have to come up here—and in the dark?" murmured Ruth at last.
"What girl?" Helen asked.
"Who are you talking about, Miss Fielding?" asked the sophomore.
"That girl—Miss Rolff."
"Oh! don't mention her name!" groaned May MacGreggor. "If it hadn't been forher, you-uns and we-uns wouldn't be cut out of the sororities. A wicked shame!"
"Oh, I've heard about that," said Jennie, puffing because of the hard climb. "Did she really have to come here, andalone, when she was initiated?"
"She started for here," said May, gloomily. "With a flashlight, I believe. But she lost her nerve——
"There! there's the rock you're looking for."
It was a huge boulder in an open field. At the angle from which they viewed it, the face of the rock really bore some semblance to a human countenance—the features of an old, old woman.
"Ugly old hag!" was May MacGreggor's comment upon the odd boulder.
The three freshmen friends from Briarwood learned a good deal more that evening than the Year Book would ever have taught them. The girls began to crowd into the Hoskin Hall dining-room right after dinner. The seniors and the juniors disappeared, but there were a large number of sophomores present, besides the president of that class who addressed the freshmen.
The latter learned that in athletics especially the rivalry between the two lower and the two upper classes was intense. It was hardly possible, of course, for any of the freshmen, and for few of the sophomores to gain positions on any of the first college teams in basket ball, rowing, tennis, archery, or other important activities of a physical nature.
All athletic sports, which included, as well as those named above, running and jumping and other track work, were under the direct supervision of the college athletic association. All the girls could belong to that. Indeed, they were expected to, and the fees were small. But for a freshman to show sufficient athletic training to make any of the first teams, would almost seem impossible. They could get on the scrubs and possess their souls with patience, hoping to win places on the first teams perhaps in their sophomore year.
However, there had once been a girl in a freshman class at Ardmore who succeeded in throwing the hammer a record-making distance; and once a freshman had been bow oar in the first eight. These were targets to aim for, Miss Dunstan, the sophomore president, told the new girls.
She was, of course, a member of the athletic committee, and having told the new girls all about the sports she proceeded to advise them about organizing their class and electing officers. This should be done by the end of the first fortnight. Meanwhile, the freshman should get together, become acquainted, and electioneer for the election of officers.
Class politics at Ardmore meant something. There were already groups and cliques forming among the freshmen. It was an honor to hold office in the class, and those who were ambitious, or who wished to control the policy of the class, were already at work.
Ruth and her friends were so ambitious in quite another direction—in two, in fact—that they rather overlooked these class activities. The following day actually opened the work of the semester, and as they already had their books the trio settled immediately to their lessons.
They were taking the classical course, a four-years' course. During this first year their studies would be English, a language (their choice of French or German) besides the never-to-be-escaped Latin; mathematics, including geometry, trigonometry and higher algebra. They had not yet decided whether to take botany or chemistry as the additional study.
"We want to keep together as much as possible, in classes as well as out," Helen said. "Let's take the same specials, too."
"I vote for botany," Ruth suggested. "That will take us into the woods and fields more."
"You mean, it will give us an excuse for going into the woods and fields," Jennie said. "I'm with you. And if I have to walk much to cut down weight, it will help."
"My goodness!" exclaimed Helen. "Heavy reallyhascome to college to get rid of her superabundance of fat."
"Surest thing you know," agreed the fleshy girl.
The freshmen learned that they would have from fifteen to eighteen recitation periods weekly, of forty-five minutes each. The recitation periods occurred between nine and twelve in the forenoon and one and three-thirty in the afternoon.
It took several days to get all these things arranged rightly; the three friends managed to get together in all classes. The classes numbered from twenty to forty students and the girls began to get acquainted with the teachers very quickly. Trust youth for judging middle-age almost immediately.
"I like Dr. McCurdy," Helen said, speaking of their English instructor, who was a man. "He knows what he's about and goes right at it. No fooling with him. None of this, 'Now young ladies, I hope you are pleasantly situated and that we are going to be good friends.' Pah!"
Ruth laughed. "The dear old things!" she said gaily. "They mean well—even that Miss Mara, whom you are imitating. And shedoeshave a beautiful French accent, if sheisIrish."
They liked Dr. Frances Milroth. Her talk in chapel was an inspiration, and that first morning some of the girls came out into the sunshine with wet eyelashes. They began to realize that they were here at college for something besides either play or ordinary study. They were at Ardmore to learn to get a grip on life.
Instrumental and vocal music could be taken at any time which did not interfere with the regular recitations, and of course Ruth took the latter as a special, while Helen did not neglect her violin.
"I guess I'll take up the study of the oboe," grumbled Jennie Stone. "I don't seem to know just what to do with myself while you girls are making sweet sounds."
"Why don't you roll, Heavy?" demanded Helen.
"Rollwhat? Roll a hoop?" asked the fleshy girl.
"No. Roll a barrel, I should say would be nearer to it," Helen responded, eyeing Jennie's plump waistline reflectively. "Get down and roll. Move back the furniture, give yourself plenty of room, androll. They say that will reduce one's curves."
"Wow! And what would the girl say downstairs under me?" asked Jennie Stone. "I'd begin by being the most unpopular girl in this freshman class."
These first few days were busy ones; but the girls of the freshman class were fast learning just where they stood. Then happened something that awoke most of the class to the fact that they needed to get together, that they must, after all, take up cudgels for themselves.
"Just like a flock of silly sheep, running together when they see a dog," Helen at first said.
"I guess there is a good reason in nature for sheep to do that," Ruth said, on reflection. "Sheep fear wolves more than any other animal, and a dog is a wolf, after all, only domesticated."
"Huh!" grunted Jennie. "Then we are sheep and the seniors are wolves, are they? I could eat up most of these seniors I've seen, myself. I will be a savage sheep—woof! woof!"
The matter that had made the disturbance, however, was not to be ignored.
Arrangements for the organization of the freshman class had lagged.
This fact may have been behind the notice put upon the bulletin boards all over the Ardmore grounds some time after bedtime one evening and before the rising bell rang the next morning. It intimated a bit of hazing, but hazing of a quality that the faculty could only wink at.
The notice was as follows: