FRESHMENIt is the command of the Senior Class of Ardmore that no Freshman shall appear within the college grounds wearing a tam-o'-shanter of any other hue save the herewith designated color, to wit: Baby Blue. This order is for the mental and spiritual good of the incoming class of Freshmen. Any member of said class refusing to obey this order will be summarily dealt with by the upper classes of Ardmore.
FRESHMEN
It is the command of the Senior Class of Ardmore that no Freshman shall appear within the college grounds wearing a tam-o'-shanter of any other hue save the herewith designated color, to wit: Baby Blue. This order is for the mental and spiritual good of the incoming class of Freshmen. Any member of said class refusing to obey this order will be summarily dealt with by the upper classes of Ardmore.
Groups gathered immediately after breakfast about the bulletin boards. Of course, the seniors and juniors passed by with dignified bearing, and without comment. The sophomores remained upon the outskirts of the groups of excited freshmen to laugh and jeer.
"A disturbed bumblebees' nest could have hummed no louder," Helen declared, as the three friends walked up to chapel, which they made a point of attending.
"Why! to think of thecheekof those seniors!" ejaculated Jennie. "And the juniors are just as bad!"
"What are you going to do about that tam of yours, Heavy?" asked Ruth, slily. "It's a gay thing—nothing like baby blue."
"Oh well," growled the fleshy girl, "baby blue is one of my favorite colors."
"Mine, too," said Ruth, drily.
"Oh, girls! Are you going to give right in—soeasy?" gasped Helen.
"I don't feel like making myself conspicuous," Ruth said. "You can wager that most of our class will hustle right off and get the proper hue in tams."
"Then we'd better go to town this very afternoon," Jennie cried, in haste, "and see if we can find three of baby blue shade. The stores will be drained of them by to-morrow."
"But to give—right—in!" wailed Helen, who dearly loved a fight.
"No. It isn't that. But, as the advertisements say: 'Eventually, so why not now?' We'll have to come to it. Let's get our tams while the tamming's good."
Helen could not see the reason for obeying the senior order; but she could see no reason, either, for not following her chum's lead. The three girls telephoned for a taxicab, which came to Dare Hall for them at half past three.
They were not the only girls going to town; but some of the freshmen, like Helen, wished to display their independence and refused—as yet—to obey the senior command.
A line at the bottom of the notice announced that three days were allowed the freshmen to obtain their proper tam-o'-shanters.
"Three days!" gasped Heavy, as they started off in the little car. "Why, it will take the stores in Greenburg two weeks to supply sufficient tams of the proper color."
"Then if we don't get ours," laughed Ruth, "we'd better go bareheaded until the new tams can be sent us from home."
"I won't do that!" cried the annoyed Helen. "Oh! oh!" she exclaimed, the next moment, and before they were out of the grounds. "See Miss Frayne! She has her scrambled-egg tam on."
"Don't you suppose she has read the notice?" worried Ruth.
"Why hasn't she?"
"Well, she seems to flock together with herself so much. Nobody seems to be chummy with her—yet," Ruth explained.
"Now, old Mother Worry!" exclaimed Helen, "bother abouther, will you?"
"Yes, ma'am," said Ruth, demurely. "I shall, I suppose."
"Goodness, Ruth!" cried Jennie.
They discovered a rather strange thing when they arrived in Greenburg and entered the first store that dealt in ladies' apparel. Oh, yes, indeed! the proprietor had tam-o'-shanters of just the required shade, baby blue. The friends bought immediately for fear some of the other girls who had come to town would find these and buy the proprietor out.
And then, prone to the usual feminine frailty, they went "window shopping." And in every store seeking trade from the college girls they found the baby blue tam-o'-shanters.
"It's the most astonishing thing!" gasped Helen. "What do you suppose it means? Did you ever see so many caps of one kind and color in all your life?"
"It is amazing," agreed Ruth. Yet she was reflective.
Jennie began to laugh. "Wonder if the seniors are just helping out their friends among the tradespeople? It looks as though the storekeepers had bought a superabundance of baby blue caps and the seniors were putting it up to us to save the stores from bankruptcy."
Ruth, however, thought it must be something other than that. Was it that the storekeepers had been notified by the senior "powers that be" to be ready to supply a sudden large demand for tam-o'-shanters of that particular hue?
At least, one little Hebrew asked the three friends if they had already bought their tam-o'-shanters. "For vy, I haf a whole case of your class colors, ladies, that my poy iss opening."
"What class color?" demanded Helen, grumpily enough.
"Oh, Mees! A peau-ti-ful plue!"
"They're all doing it! They're all doing it!" murmured Jennie, staggering out of the "emporium." "This is going to affect my brain, girls.Didthe seniors know the storekeepers had the tams in stock, or have the storekeepers been put wise by our elder sisters at Ardmore?"
"What's the odds?" finally laughed Helen, as they got into the waiting car. "We've gotourtams. I only hope there are enough to go around."
The appearance of more than a score of baby-blue caps on the campus before evening showed that our trio of freshmen were not the only members of their class who considered it wise to obey the mandate of the lordly seniors, and without question.
The tempest in the teapot, however, continued to rage. Many girls declared they had not come to Ardmore to "be made monkeys of."
"No," May MacGreggor was heard to say. "Some of you were already assisted by nature. But get together, freshies! Can't you read the handwriting on the wall?"
"We can read the typewriting on the billboards," sniffed Helen Cameron. "Don't ask us to strain our eyesight farther."
Perhaps this was really the intention behind the senior order—that the entering girls should become more quickly riveted into a compact body. How the rooms occupied by the more popular freshmen buzzed during the next few days!
Our trio of friends, Ruth, Helen and Jennie, had been in danger of establishing a clique of three, if they had but known it. Now they were forced to extend their borders of acquaintanceship.
As they were three, and were usually seen about the study-room Ruth and Helen had established, it was natural that other girls of their class on that corridor of Dale Hall should flock to them. They thus became the nucleus at this side of the campus of the freshman class. From discussing the rule of the haughty seniors, the freshmen began to talk of their own organization and the approaching election.
Had Ruth allowed her friends to do so, there would have been started a boom by Helen and Jennie Stone for the girl of the Red Mill for president of the freshman class. This honor Ruth did not desire. There were several girls whom she had noted already among her mates, older than she, and who evidently possessed qualities for the position.
Besides, Ruth Fielding felt that if she became unduly prominent at first at Ardmore, girls like Edith Phelps would consider her a particularly bright target. She told herself again, but this time in private, that fame was not always an asset.
However much the natural independence of the freshmen balked at the mandate promulgated by the seniors, baby-blue tam-o'-shanters grew more numerous every hour on the Ardmore campus.
The sophomores were evidently filled with glee; the juniors and seniors smiled significantly, but said nothing. The freshmen had been put in their place at once, it was considered. But the attack upon them had made the newcomers eager for an organization of their own.
"If we are going to be bossed this way—and it is disgraceful!—we must be prepared to withstand imposition," Helen announced.
So they began busily settling the matter of the organization of the class and the choosing of its officers. Before these matters were arranged completely, however, there was an incident of note.
The freshmen, as a body, were invited to attend a sophomore "roar." It was to be the first out-of-door "roar" of the year and occurred right after classes and lectures one afternoon. The two lower classes scamped their gymnasium work to make it a success.
Now, a "roar" at Ardmore was much nicer than it sounds. It was merely an open-air singing festival, and this one was for the purpose of making the freshmen familiar with the popular songs of the college.
Professor Leidenburg, the musical director, himself led the outdoor concert. The sophomores stood in a compact body before the main entrance to the college hall. Massed in the background, and in a half circle, were the freshmen.
The weather had become cool and all the girls wore their tam-o'-shanters. For the first time it was noticeable how pretty the pale blue caps on the freshmen's heads looked. And the new girls likewise noted that most of the tam-o'-shanters worn-by their sophomore hostesses were pale yellow.
It was whispered then (and strange none of the freshmen had discovered it before) that the class preceding theirs at Ardmore—the present sophomores—had been forced to wear caps of a distinctive color, too. These pale yellow ones were their old caps, left over from the previous winter.
The open-air assemblages of the college were made more attractive by this scheme of a particular class color in head-wear.
There was a blot in the assembly of the freshmen on this occasion. It was not discovered in the beginning. Soon, however, there was much whispering, and looking about and pointing.
"Do you seethat?" gasped Jennie, who had been straining her neck and hopping up and down on her toes to see what the other girls were looking at.
"Whatareyou rubbering at, Heavy?" demanded Helen, inelegantly.
"Yes; what's all the disturbance?" asked Ruth.
"That girl!" ejaculated the fleshy one.
"What girl now? Any particular girl?"
"She's not very particular, I guess," returned Jennie, "or she wouldn't do it."
"Jennie!" demanded Helen. "Whodowhat?"
"That Frayne girl," explained her plump friend.
Rebecca Frayne stood well back in the lines of freshmen. It could not be said that she thrust herself forward, or sought to gain the attention of the crowd. Nevertheless, among the mass of pale blue tam-o'-shanters, her parti-colored one was very prominent.
"Goodness!" gasped Ruth. "Doesn't she know better?"
"Do you suppose she is one of those stubborn girls who just 'won't be driv'?" giggled Helen.
It was no laughing matter. The three days of grace written upon the seniors' order regarding the caps had now passed. There seemed no good reason for one member of the freshman class to refuse to obey the command. Indeed, they had all tacitly agreed to do as they were told—upon this single point, at least.
"There certainly are enough of them left in town so that she can buy one," Jennie Stone said.
"Goodness!" snapped Helen. "Ifmycomplexion can stand such a silly color,herscertainly can."
Before the out-of-doors concert was over, news of this rebellion on the part of a single freshman had run through the crowd like a breath of wind over ripe wheat. It almost broke up the "roar."
As the last verse of the last song was ended and the company began to disperse, the freshmen themselves, and the sophomores as well, stared at Rebecca Frayne in open wonder. She started for her room, which was in Dare Hall on the same corridor as that of the three girls from Briarwood, and Ruth and Helen and Jennie were right behind her.
"That certainly is an awful tam," groaned Jennie. "What do you suppose makes her wear it, anyway? Let alone the trouble——"
She broke off. Miss Dexter, the first senior who had spoken to Ruth and Helen coming over from the railway station on the auto-bus, stopped the strange girl whose initials were the same as those of the girl of the Red Mill.
"Will you tell me, please, why you are wearing that tam-o'-shanter?" asked Miss Dexter.
Rebecca Frayne's head came up and a spot of vivid red appeared in either of her sallow cheeks.
"Is thatyourbusiness?" she demanded, slowly.
"Do you know that I am a senior?" asked Miss Dexter, levelly.
"I don't care if you are two seniors," returned Rebecca Frayne, saucily.
Miss Dexter turned her back upon the freshman and walked promptly away. The listeners were appalled. None of them cared to go forward and speak to Rebecca Frayne.
"Cracky!" gasped Helen. "She's an awful spitfire."
"She's an awful chump!" groaned Jennie. "The seniors won't do a thing to her!"
But nothing came at once of Rebecca's refusal to obey the seniors' command regarding tam-o'-shanters. It was known, however, that the executive committees of both the senior and junior classes met that next night and supposedly took the matter up.
"Oh, no! They don't haze any more at Ardmore," said Jennie, shaking her head. "But just wait!"
Ruth Fielding was not at all satisfied. Not that her experiences in these first few weeks of college were not wholly "up to sample," as the slangy Jennie Stone remarked. Ruth was getting personally all out of college life that she could expect.
The mere fact that a little handful of the girls looked at her somewhat askance because of her success as a motion picture writer, did not greatly trouble the girl of the Red Mill. She could wait for them to forget her small "fame" or for them to learn that she was quite as simple and unaffected as any other girl of her age. It was about Rebecca Frayne that Ruth was disturbed in her mind. Here was the case of a student who, Ruth believed, was much misunderstood.
She could not imagine a girl deliberately making trouble for herself. Rebecca Frayne by the expenditure of a couple of dollars in the purchase of a new tam-o'-shanter might have easily overcome this dislike that had been bred not alone in the minds of the girls of the two upper classes, but among the sophomores and her own classmates as well. The sophomores thought her ridiculous; the freshmen themselves felt that she was bringing upon the whole class unmerited criticism.
Ruth looked deeper. She saw the strange girl walk past her mates unnoticed, scarcely spoken to, indeed, by the freshmen and ignored completely by members of the other classes. And yet, to Ruth's mind, there seemed to be an air about Rebecca Frayne—a look in her eyes, perhaps—that seemed to beg for sympathy.
It was no hardship for Ruth to speak to the girl and try to be friendly with her. But opportunities for this were not frequent.
In the first place Ruth's own time was much occupied with her studies, her own personal friends, Helen and Jennie, and the new scenario on which she worked during every odd hour.
Several times Ruth went to the door of Rebecca's room and knocked. She positively knew the girl was at home, but there had been no answer to her summons and the door was locked.
The situation troubled Ruth. When she was among her classmates, Rebecca seemed nervously anxious to please and eager to be spoken to, although she had little to say. Here, on the other hand, once alone in her room, she deliberately shut herself away from all society.
Soon after the outdoor song festival that had been so successful, and immediately following the organization of the freshman class and its election of officers, Ruth and Helen went over to the library one evening to consult some reference books.
The reference room was well filled with busy girls of all classes, who came bustling in, got down the books they required, dipped into them for a minute and then departed to their own studies, or else settled down to work on their topics for a more extended period.
It was a cold evening, and whenever a girl entered from the hall a breath of frosty air came with her, and most of those gathered in the room were likely to look up and shiver. Few of those assembled failed to notice Rebecca Frayne when she came in.
"Goodness! See who has came," whispered Helen.
"Oh, Rebecca!" murmured Ruth, looking up as the girl in question crossed the room.
"Hasn't she the cheek of all cheeks to breeze in here this way?" Helen went on to say with more force than elegance. "That awful tam again."
One could not fail to see the tam-o'-shanter very well. It was noticeable in any assembly.
Perhaps half of the girls in the reference room were seniors and juniors. Several of the members of the younger classes nodded to the newcomer, though not many noticed her in this way.
There was, however, almost immediately a general movement by the girls belonging to the senior and junior classes. They got up grimly, put away the books they were at work upon, and filed out, one by one, and without saying a word.
Helen stared after them, and nudged Ruth.
"What is it?" asked her chum, who had been too busy to notice.
"Did you see that?" asked Helen.
"Did I see what?"
"There isn't a senior or a jun left in the room. That—that's something more than a coincidence."
Ruth was puzzled. "I really wish you would explain," she said.
Helen was not the only girl remaining who had noticed the immediate departure of the members of the two older classes. Some of the sophomores were whispering together. Rebecca's fellow-classmen glanced at her sharply to see if she had noticed what had occurred.
"I can't believe it," Ruth said worriedly, after Helen explained. "They would not go out because she came in."
The next day, however, the matter was more marked. Rebecca could sing; she evidently loved singing. In the classes for vocal music there was often a mixture of all grades, some of the seniors and juniors attending with the sophomores and freshmen.
Ruth Fielding, of course, never missed these classes. She hoped to be noticed and have her voice tried out for the Glee Club. Professor Leidenburg was to give a little talk on this day that would be helpful, and the class was well attended.
But when Rebecca Frayne came into the small hall just before the professor himself appeared, there was a stir throughout the audience. The girls, of course, were hatless here; but that morning Rebecca had been seen wearing the "scrambled-egg tam," as Helen insisted upon calling it.
There was an intake of breath all over the room. Rebecca walked down the aisle in search of an empty seat.
And suddenly half the seats were empty. She could have her choice—and a large one.
"Goodness!" Helen gasped.
Every senior and junior in the room had arisen and had left her seat. Not a word had been spoken, nor had they glanced at Rebecca Frayne, who at first was unaware of what it portended.
The older girls filed out silently. Professor Leidenburg entered by the door beside the organ just in time to see the last of them disappear. He looked a bit surprised, but said nothing and took up the matter at hand with but half an audience.
Rebecca Frayne had seen and understood at last. She sat still in her seat, and Ruth saw that she did not open her lips when, later, the choruses were sung. Her face was very pale.
Nobody spoke to her when the class was dismissed. This was not an intentional slight on the part of her mates; simply, the girls did not know what to say.
The seniors and juniors were showing Rebecca that she was taboo. Their attitude could not be mistaken. And so great was the influence of these older girls of Ardmore upon the whole college that Rebecca walked entirely alone.
Ruth and Helen walked down the hill behind Rebecca that afternoon. Ruth was very silent, while Helen buzzed about a dozen things.
"I—I wonder how that poor girl feels?" murmured the girl of the Red Mill after a while.
"Cold, I imagine!" declared her chum, vigorously. "I'm half frozen myself, Ruth. There's going to be a big frost to-night and the lake is already skimmed over. Say, Ruth!"
"Well?" asked her friend, absently.
"Let's take our skates first thing in the morning down to that man who sharpens things at the boathouse; will you?"
Ruth Fielding was quite as eager for fun between lessons as either Helen or Jennie, and the prospect of skating on such a large lake as Remona delighted her. The second day following the incident in the chorus class, the ice which had bound Lake Remona was officially pronounced safe.
Gymnasium athletics lost their charm for those girls who were truly active and could skate. There were luxurious damsels who preferred to be pushed about in ice-chairs by more active girls or by hired attendants; but our trio of friends did not look upon that as enjoyment.
Even Jennie Stone was a vigorous skater. After a day or two on the ice, when their ankles had become strong enough, the three made a circuit of Bliss Island—and that was "some skate," to quote Jennie.
The island was more than a mile from the boathouse, and it was five or six miles in circumference. Therefore, the task was quite all of an eight-mile jaunt.
"But 'do or die' is our motto," remarked Helen, as they set forth on this determined journey. "Let's show these pussy girls what it means to have trained at Briarwood."
"That's all right! that's all right!" grumbled Jennie. "But your motto is altogether too grim and significant. Let's limit it. I want todoif I can; but mercy me! I don't want todieyet. You girls have got to stop and rest when I say so, or I won't go at all."
Ruth and Helen agreed. That is why it took them until almost dinner-time to encircle the island. Jennie Stone was determined to rest upon the least provocation.
"We'll be starved to death before we get back," Helen began to complain while they were upon the south side of the island. "I should think you would feel the pinch of privation, Heavy."
"I do," admitted the other hollowly.
"Well, why didn't you escape it by refusing to come, or else by bringing a lunch?" demanded the black-eyed girl.
"No. This is a part of the system," groaned Jennie.
"What system, I'd like to know?" Ruth asked, in surprise.
"System of martyrdom, I guess," sniffed Helen.
"You've said it," agreed the plump girl. "That is the truest word yet spoken. Martyrdom! that is what it means for me."
"What means to you?" snapped Helen, exasperated because she could not understand.
"This dieting and exercising," Jennie said more cheerfully. "I deliberately came so far and without food to see if I couldn't really lose some weight. Do you know, girls, I am so hollow and so tired right now, that I believe I must have lost a few ounces, anyway."
"You ridiculous thing!" laughed Helen, recovering her good nature.
"Should we sacrifice ourselves for your benefit, do you think, Jennie?" Ruth asked.
"Why not? 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' only more so. I need the inspiration of you girls to help me," Jennie declared. "Do you know, sometimes I am almost discouraged?"
"About what?" asked Helen.
"About my weight. I watch the bathroom scales with eagle eye. But instead of coming down by pounds, I only fall by ounces. It is awfully discouraging. And then," added the fleshy girl, "the other day when we had such a scrumptuous dinner—was it Columbus Day? I believe so—I was tempted to eat one of my old-time 'full and plenty' meals, and what do you think?"
"You had the nightmare," said Helen.
"Not a chance! But I went uptwo pounds and a half—or else the scales were crazy!"
"Girls!" exclaimed Ruth, suddenly. "Do you know it is snowing?"
"My! I never expected that," cried Helen, as a feathery flake lit upon the very point of her pretty nose. "Ow!"
"Well, we'd better go on, I guess," Ruth observed. "Put your best foot forward, please, Miss Jennie."
"I don't know which is my best foot now," complained the heavy girl. "They are both getting lame."
"We'll just have to make you sit down on the ice while we drag you," announced Helen, increasing the length of her stroke.
"Not much you won't!" exclaimed Jennie Stone, "I'm cold enough as it is."
"Shall we take off our skates and walk over the island, girls?" suggested Ruth. "That will save some time and more than a little work for Heavy."
"Don't worry about me," put in Jennie. "I need the exercise. And walking would be worse than skating, I do believe."
It was snowing quite thickly now; but the shore of the island was not far away. The trio hugged it closely in encircling the wooded and hilly piece of land.
"Say!" Helen cried, "we're not the only girls out here to-day."
"Huh?" grunted Jennie, head down and skating doggedly.
"See there, Ruth!" called the black-eyed girl.
Ruth turned her face to one side and looked under the shade of her hand, which she held above her eyes. There was a figure moving along the shore of Bliss Island just abreast of them.
"It's a girl," she said. "But she's not skating."
"Who is it? A freshie?" asked Jennie, but little interested.
Ruth did not reply. She seemed wonderfully interested by the appearance of the girl on shore. She fell behind her mates while she watched the figure.
The snow was increasing; and that with the abruptly rising island, furnished a background for the strange girl which threw her into relief.
At first Ruth was attracted only by her figure. She could not see her face.
"Who can she be? Not one of the girls at Dare Hall——"
This idea spun to nothingness very quickly. No! The figure ashore reminded Ruth Fielding of nobody whom she had seen recently. The feeling, however, that she knew the person grew.
The snow blew sharply into the faces of the skating girls; but she on shore was somewhat sheltered from the gale. The wind was out of the north and west and the highland of the island broke the zest of the gale for the strange girl.
"And yet she isn't strange—Iknowshe isn't," murmured Ruth Fielding, casting another glance back at the figure on the shore.
"Come on, Ruth!Dohurry!" cried Helen, looking back. "Even Heavy is beating you."
Ruth quickened her efforts. The strange girl disappeared, mounting a path it seemed toward the center of the island. Ruth, head bent and lips tightly closed, skated on intent upon her mystifying thoughts.
The trio rounded the island at last. They got the wind somewhat at their backs and on a long slant made for the boathouse landing. It was growing dusk, but there was a fire at the landing that beckoned them on.
"Glad it isn't any farther," Helen panted. "This snow is gathering so fast it clogs one's skates."
"Oh, I must be losing pounds!" puffed Jennie Stone. "I bet none of my clothes will fit me to-morrow. I shall have to throw them all away."
"Oh, Heavy!" giggled Helen. "That lovely new silk?"
"Oh—well—I shall takethatin!" drawled Jennie.
"I've got it!" exclaimed Ruth, in a most startling way.
"Goodness me! are you hurt?" demanded Helen.
"What you got? A cramp?" asked Jennie, quite as solicitous.
"I know now who that girl looked like," declared Ruth.
"What girl?" rejoined Helen Cameron. "The one over yonder, on the other side of the island?"
"Yes. She looks just like that Maggie who came to the mill, Helen. You remember, don't you? The girl I left to help Aunt Alvirah when I came to college."
"Well, for the land's sake!" said Jennie Stone. "If she's up there at the Red Mill, how can she possibly be down here, too? You're talking out of order, Miss Fielding. Sit down!"
Ruth Fielding could not get that surprising, that almost unbelievable, discovery out of her mind.
It seemed ridiculous to think that girl could be Maggie, "the waif," she had seen on Bliss Island. Aunt Alvirah had written Ruth a letter only a few days before and in it she said that Maggie was very helpful and seemed wholly content.
"Only," the little old housekeeper at the Red Mill wrote, "I don't know a mite more about the child now than I did when Mr. Tom Cameron and our Ben brought her in, all white and fainty-like."
The girls had to hurry on or be late to dinner. But the very first thing Ruth did when she reached their rooms in Dare Hall was to look up Aunt Alvirah's letter and see when it was dated and mailed.
"It's obvious," Ruth told herself, "that Maggie could have reached here almost as soon as the letter if she had wished to. But why come at all? If it was Maggie over on that island, why was she there?"
Of course, these ruminations were all in private. Ruth knew better than to take her two close friends into her confidence. If she did the mystery would have been the chief topic of conversation after dinner, instead of the studies slated for that evening.
An incident occurred, however, at dinner which served to take Ruth's mind, too, from the mystery. There were a number of seniors and juniors quartered at Dare Hall. Nor were all the seniors table-captains at dinner.
This evening the dining hall had filled early. Perhaps the brisk air and their outdoor exercise had given the girls sharper appetites than usual. It had the three girls from Briarwood. They were wearied after their long skate around the island and as ravenous as wolves. They could scarcely wait for Miss Comstock, at the head of their particular table, to begin eating so they might do so, too.
And just at this moment, as the pleasant bustle of dinner began, and the lightly tripping waitresses were stepping hither and yon with their trays, the door opened and a single belated girl entered the dining hall.
As though the entrance of this girl were expected, a hush fell over the room. Everybody but Jennie looked up, their soup spoons poised as they watched Rebecca Frayne walk down the long room to her place at the housekeeper's table.
"Sh!" hissed Helen, admonishing Jennie Stone.
"What's the matter?" demanded the fleshy girl in surprise. "Is my soup noisy? I'll have to train it better."
But nobody laughed. All eyes were fastened on the girl who had made herself so obnoxious to the seniors and the juniors of Ardmore. She sat down and a waitress put her soup before her. Before poor Rebecca could lift her spoon there was a stir all over the room. Every senior and junior (and there were more than half a hundred in the dining hall) arose, save those acting as table-captains or monitors. The rustle of their rising was subdued; they murmured their excuses to the heads of their several tables in a perfectly polite manner; and not a glance from their eyes turned toward Rebecca Frayne. But as they walked out of the dining hall, their dinners scarcely tasted, the slight put upon the freshman who would not obey was too direct and obvious to be mistaken.
Even Jennie Stone was at length aroused from her enjoyment of the very good soup.
"What do you know aboutthat?" she demanded of Ruth and Helen.
Ruth said not a word. To tell the truth she felt so sorry for Rebecca Frayne that she lost taste for her own meal, hungry though she had been when she sat down.
How Rebecca herself felt could only be imagined. She had already shown herself to be a painful mixture of sensitiveness and carelessness of criticism that made Ruth Fielding, at least, wonder greatly.
Now she ate her dinner without seeming to observe the attitude the members of the older classes had taken.
"Cracky!" murmured Jennie, in the middle of dinner. "She's got all the best of it—believe me! The seniors and the juns go hungry."
"For a principle," snapped the girl beside her, who chanced to be a sophomore.
"Well," said Jennie, smiling, "principles are far from filling. They're a good deal like the only part of the doughnut that agreed with the dyspeptic—the hole. Please pass the bread, dear. Somebody must have eaten mine—and it was nicely buttered, too."
"Goodness! nothing disturbs your calm, does it, Miss Stone?" cried another girl.
Few of the girls in the dining hall, however, could keep their minds or their gaze off Rebecca Frayne. In whispers all through the meal she was discussed by her close neighbors. Girls at tables farther away talked of the situation frankly.
And the consensus of opinion was against her. It was the general feeling that she was entirely in the wrong. The very law which she had essayed to flaunt was that which had brought the freshmen together as a class, and was welding them into a homogeneous whole.
"She's a goose!" exclaimed Helen Cameron.
And perhaps this was true. It did look foolish. Yet Ruth felt that there must be some misunderstanding back of it all. It should be explained. The girl could not go on in this way.
"First we know she'll be packing up and leaving Ardmore," Ruth said worriedly.
"She'll leave nobody in tears, I guess," declared one girl within hearing.
"But she's one of us—she's a freshman!" Ruth murmured.
"She doesn't seem to desire our company or friendship," said another and more thoughtful girl.
"And she won't pack up in a hurry," drawled Jennie, still eating. "Remember all those bags and that enormous trunk she brought?"
"But, say," began Helen, slowly, "where are all the frocks and things she was supposed to bring with her? We supposed she'd be the peacock of the class, and I don't believe I've seen her in more than three different dresses and only two hats, including that indescribably brilliant tam."
Ruth said nothing. She was thinking. She planned to get out of the dining hall at the same time Rebecca did, but just as the dessert was being passed the odd girl rose quickly, bowed her excuses to the housekeeper, and almost ran out of the hall.
"She was crying!" gasped Ruth, feeling both helpless and sympathetic.
"I wager she bit her tongue, then," remarked Jennie.
Ruth hurried through her dessert and left the dining hall ahead of most of the girls. She glanced through the long windows and saw that it was still snowing.
"I wonder if that girl is over on the island yet?" she reflected as she ran upstairs.
Her first thought just then was of an entirely different girl. She went to Rebecca's door and knocked. She knocked twice, then again. But no answer was returned. No light came through the keyhole, or from under the door; yet Ruth felt sure that Rebecca Frayne was in the room, and weeping. It was a situation in which Ruth Fielding longed to help, yet there seemed positively nothing she could do as long as the stubborn girl would not meet her half way. With a sigh she went to the study she and Helen jointly occupied.
Before switching on the light she went to one of the windows that looked out on the lake. Bliss Island was easily visible from this point. The snow was still falling, but not heavily enough to obstruct her vision much. The white bulk of the island rose in the midst of the field of snow-covered ice. It seemed nearer than it ordinarily appeared.
As Ruth gazed she saw a spark of light on the island, high up from the shore, but evidently among the trees, for it was intermittent. Now it was visible and again only a red glow showed there. She was still gazing upon this puzzling light when Helen opened the door.
"Hello, Ruthie!" she cried. "All in the dark? Oh! isn't the outside world beautiful to-night?"
She came to the window and put her arm about Ruth's waist.
"See how solemnly the snow is falling—and the whole world is white," murmured the black-eyed girl. "'Oft in the stilly night'——Or is it 'Oft in the silly night'?" and she laughed, for it was not often nor for long that the sentiment that lay deep in Helen's heart rose to the surface. "Oh! What's that light over there, Ruth?" she added, with quick apprehension.
"That is what I have been looking at," Ruth said.
"But you don't tell me what it is!" cried Helen.
"Because I don't know. But I suspect."
"Suspect what?"
"That it is a campfire," said Ruth. "Yes. It seems to be in one spot. Only the wind makes the flames leap, and at one time they are plainly visible while again they are partly obscured."
"Who ever would camp over on Bliss Island on a night like this?" gasped Helen.
"I don't see why you put such mysteries up to me," returned Ruth, with a shrug. "I'm no prophet. But——"
"But what?"
"Do you remember that girl we saw on the island this afternoon?"
"Goodness! Yes."
"Well, mightn't it be she, or a party she may be with?"
"Campers on the island in a snow storm? No girls from this college would be so silly," Helen declared.
"I'm not at all sure she was an Ardmore girl," said Ruth, reflectively.
"Who under the sun could she be, then?"
"Almost anybody else," laughed Ruth. "It is going to stop snowing altogether soon, Helen. See! the moon is breaking through the clouds."
"It will be lovely out," sighed Helen. "But hard walking."
Ruth gestured towards their two pairs of snowshoes crossed upon the wall. "Not on those," she said.
"Oh, Ruthie! Would you?"
"All we have to do is to tighten them and sally forth."
"Gracious! I'd be willing to be Sally Fifth for a spark of fun," declared Helen, eagerly.
"How about Heavy?" asked Ruth, as Helen hastened to take down the snowshoes which both girls had learned to use years before at Snow Camp, in the Adirondacks.
"Dead to the world already, I imagine," laughed Helen. "I saw her to her room, and I believe she was so tired and so full of dinner that she tumbled into bed almost before she got her clothes off. You'd never get her out on such a crazy venture!"
Helen was as happy as a lark over the chance of "fun." The two girls skilfully tightened the stringing of the shoes, and then, having put on coats, mittens, and drawn the tam-o'-shanters down over their ears, they crept out of their rooms and hastened downstairs and out of the dormitory building.
There was not a moving object in sight upon the campus or the sloping white lawns to the level of the frozen lake. The two chums thrust their toes into the straps of their snowshoes and set forth.
Six inches or more of snow had fallen. It was feathery and packed well under the snowshoes. The girls sank about two inches into the fleecy mass and there the shoes made a complete bed for themselves and the weight of their wearers.
"You know what I'd love to do this winter?" said Helen, as they trudged on.
"What, my dear?" asked Ruth, who seemed much distraught.
"I'd like to try skiing. The slope of College Hill would be just splendiferous forthat! Away from the observatory to the lake—and then some!"
"We'll start a skiing club among the freshies," Ruth said, warmly accepting the idea. "Wonder nobody has thought of it before."
"Ardmore hasn't waked up yet to all its possibilities," said Helen, demurely. "But this umpty-umph class of freshmen will show the college a thing or two before we pass from out its scholastic halls."
"Question!" cried Ruth, laughing. Then: "There! you can see that light again."
"Goodness! You're never going over to that island?" cried Helen.
"What did we come out for?" asked Ruth. "And scamp our study hour?"
"Goodness!" cried Helen, again, "just forfun."
"Well, it may be fun to find out just who built that fire and what for," said Ruth.
"And then again," objected her chum, "it may be no fun at all, butserious."
"I have a serious reason for finding out—if I can," Ruth declared.
"What is it, dear?"
"I'll tell you later," said Ruth. "Follow me now."
"If I do I'll not wear diamonds, and I may get into trouble," objected Helen.
"You've never got into very serious trouble yet by following my leadership," laughed Ruth. "Come on, Fraid-cat."
"Ain't! But we don't know who is over there. Just to think! A camp in the snow!"
"Well, we have camped in the snow ourselves," laughed Ruth, harking back to an adventure at Snow Camp that neither of them would ever be likely to forget.
They scuffed along on the snowshoes, soon reaching the edge of the lake. Nobody was about the boathouse, for the ice would have to be swept and scraped by the horse-drawn machines before the girls could go skating again.
The moon was pushing through the scurrying clouds, and the snow had ceased falling.
"Look back!" crowed Helen. "Looks as though two enormous animals had come down the hillside, doesn't it?"
"The girls will wake up and view our tracks with wonder in the morning," said Ruth, with a smile. "Perhaps they'll think that some curious monsters have visited Ardmore."
"That would cause more wonderment than the case of Rebecca Frayne. What do you suppose is finally going to happen to that foolish girl?"
"I really cannot guess," Ruth returned, shaking her head sadly. "Poor thing!"
"Why! she can't bepoor," gasped Helen. "Look at all those trunks she brought with her to Ardmore. And her dresses are tremendously fancy—although we've not seen many of them yet."
Ruth stared at her chum for a moment without replying. It was right there and then that she came near to guessing the secret of Rebecca Frayne's trouble. But she forbore to say anything about it at the time, and went on beside her chum toward the white island, much disturbed in her mind.
Now and then they caught sight of the dancing flames of the campfire. But when they were nearer the island, the hill was so steep that they lost sight completely of the light.
"Suppose it's aman?" breathed Helen, suddenly, as they began to climb the shore of Bliss Island.
"He won't eat us," returned Ruth.
"No. They don't often. Only cannibals, and they are not prevalent in this locality," giggled Helen. "But if itisa man——"
"Then we'll turn around and go back," said Ruth, coolly. "I haven't come out here to get acquainted with any male person."
"Bluie! Suppose he's a real nice boy?"
"There's no such an animal," laughed Ruth. "That is, not around here at the present moment."
"Oh yes. I see," Helen rejoined drily. "The nearestniceone is at the Seven Oaks Military Academy."
"So you say," Ruth said demurely. "But if it were Tom?"
"Dear old Tom and some of his chums!" cried Helen. "Wouldn't it be great? This Adamless Eden is rather palling on me, Chum. The other girls have visitors, but our friends are too far away."
"Hush!" advised Ruth. "Whoever it is up there will hear you."
Helen was evidently not at all enamored of this adventure. She lagged behind a little. Yet she would not allow Ruth to go on alone to interview the mysterious camper.
"I tell you what," the black-eyed girl said, after a moment and in a whisper. "I believe that fire is up near the big boulder we looked at—you remember? The Stone Face, do they call it?"
"Quite possibly," Ruth rejoined briskly. "Come on if you're coming. I'm sure the Stone Face won't hurt us."
"Not unless it falls on us," giggled Helen.
The grove of big trees that covered this part of the hillside was open, and the chums very easily made their way toward the fire, even on snowshoes. But the shoes naturally made some noise as they scuffed over the snow, and in a minute Ruth stopped and slipped her feet out of the straps, motioning Helen to do the same. They wore overshoes so there was no danger of their getting their feet wet in the snow.
Hand in hand, Ruth and Helen crept forward. They saw the fire flickering just before them. There was a single figure between the fire and the very boulder of which Helen had spoken.
Reaching the edge of the grove the girls gazed without discovery at the camp in the snow. The boulder stood in a small open space, and it was so high and bulky that it sheltered the fire and the camper quite comfortably. As Ruth had suspected, the latter was the girl she had seen walking upon the southern shore of Bliss Island. She knew her by her figure, if not by her face, which was at the moment hidden.
"She's alone," whispered Helen, making the words with her lips more than with her voice.
"Whatcanshe be doing out here?" was the black-eyed girl's next demand.
Her chum put out a hand in a gesture of warning and at once walked out of the shelter of the trees and approached the fire. Helen lingered behind. After all, it was so strange a situation that she did not feel very courageous.
The moon had quite broken through the clouds now and as Ruth drew nearer to the fire and the girl, her shadow was projected before her upon the snow. The girl who looked like Maggie suddenly espied this shadow, raised her head, and leaped up with a cry.
"Don't be frightened, Maggie," said Ruth. "It's only us two girls."
"My—my name is—isn't Maggie," stammered the strange girl.
And sure enough, having once seen her closely, Ruth Fielding saw that she was quite wrong in her identification. This was not the girl who had drifted down the Lumano River to the Red Mill and taken refuge with Aunt Alvirah.
This was a much more assertive person than Maggie—a girl with plenty of health, both of body and mind. Maggie impressed one as being mentally or nervously deficient. Not so this girl who was camping here in the snow on Bliss Island. Yet there was a resemblance to Maggie in the figure of the stranger, and Ruth noted a resemblance in her features, too.
"My goodness me!" she said, laughing pleasantly. "If you're not our Maggie you look near enough like her to be her sister."
"Well, I haven't any sister in that college," said the strange girl, shortly. "You're from Ardmore, aren't you?"
"Yes," Ruth said, Helen now having joined them. "And we saw your light——"
"Mywhat?" demanded the camping girl, who was warmly, though plainly dressed.
"Your campfire. You see," explained Ruth, finding it rather difficult after all to talk to this very self-possessed girl, "we skated around the island to-day——"
"I saw you," said the stranger gruffly. "There were three of you."
"Yes. And I thought you looked like Maggie, then."
"Isn't this Maggie one of you?" sharply demanded the stranger.
"She's a girl whom—whom I know," Ruth said quickly. "A really nice girl. And you do look like her. Doesn't she, Helen?"
"Why—yes—something like," drawled Helen.
"And did you have to come out here to see if I were your friend?" asked the other girl.
"When I saw the campfire—yes," Ruth admitted. "It seemed so strange, you know."
"What seemed strange?" demanded the girl, very tartly. It was plain that she considered their visit an intrusion.
"Why, think of it yourself," Ruth cried, while Helen sniffed audibly. "A girl camping alone on this island—and in a snowstorm."
"It isn't snowing now," said the girl, smiling grimly.
"But it was when we saw the fire at first," Ruth hastened to say. "You know yourself you would be interested."
"Not enough to come clear out here—must be over a mile!—to see about it," was the rejoinder. "I usually mind my own business."
"So do we, you may be sure!" spoke up Helen, quick to take offence. "Come away, Ruth."
But the girl of the Red Mill was not at all satisfied. She said, frankly:
"I do wish that you would tell us why you are here? Surely, you won't remain all night in this lonely place? There is nobody else on the island, is there?"
"I should hope not!" exclaimed the girl. "Only you two busybodies."
"But, really, we came because we were interested in what went on here. It seems so strange for a girl, alone——"
"You've said that before," was the dry reply. "I am a girl alone. I am here on my own business. Andthatisn't yours."
"Oh!" ejaculated Helen, angrily.
"Well, if you don't like being spoken to plainly, you needn't stay," the strange girl flung at her.
"I see that very well," returned Helen, tossing her head. "Docome away, Ruth."
"Ha!" exclaimed the strange girl, suddenly looking at Ruth more intently. "Are you called Ruth?"
"Yes. Ruth Fielding is my name."
"Oh!" and the girl's face changed in its expression and a little flush came into her cheeks. "I've—I've heard of you."
"Indeed! How?" cried Ruth, eagerly. She felt that this girl must really have some connection with Maggie at the mill, she looked so much like the waif.
"Oh," said the other girl slowly, looking away, "I heard you wrote picture plays. I saw one of them. That's all."
Ruth was silent for a moment. Helen kept tugging at her arm and urging her to go.
"We—we can do nothing for you?" queried the girl of the Red Mill at last.
"You can get off the island—that's as much as I care," said the strange girl, with a harsh laugh. "You're only intruding where you're not wanted."
"Well, I do declare!" burst out Helen again. "She is the most impolite thing.Docome away, Ruthie."
"We really came with the best intentions," Ruth added, as she turned away with her chum. "It—it doesn't look right for a girl to be alone at a campfire on this island—and at night, too."
"I sha'n't stay here all night," the girl said shortly. "You needn't fret. If you want to know, I just built the fire to get warm by before I started back."
"Back where?" Ruth could not help asking.
"Thatyou don't know—and you won't know," returned the strange girl, and turned her back upon them.
The two chums did not speak a word to each other until they had recovered their snowshoes and set out down the rough side of Bliss Island for the ice. Then Helen sputtered:
"People likethat! Did you ever see such a person? I never was so insulted——"
"Pshaw! She was right—in a way," Ruth said coolly. "We had no real business to pry into her affairs."
"Well!"
"I got you into it. I'm sorry," the girl of the Red Mill said. "I thought it really was Maggie, or I wouldn't have come over here."
"She's something like that Maggie girl," proclaimed Helen. "Shewas nice, I thought."
"Maybe this girl is nice, taken under other circumstances," laughed Ruth. "I really would like to know what she is over here for."
"No good, I'll be bound," said the pessimistic Helen.
"And another thing," Ruth went on to say, as she and her chum reached the level of the frozen lake, "did you notice that pick handle?"
"That what?" demanded Helen, in amazement.
"Pickaxe handle—I believe it was," Ruth said thoughtfully. "It was thrust out of the snow pile she had scraped away from the boulder. And, moreover, the ground looked as though it had been dug into."
"Why, the ground is as hard as the rock itself," Helen cried. "There are six or eight inches of frost right now."
"I guess that's so," agreed Ruth. "Perhaps that's why she built such a big fire."
"Whatdoyou mean, Ruth Fielding?" cried her chum.
"I think she wanted to dig there for something," Ruth replied reflectively. "I wonder what for?"
When they had returned to Dare Hall and had got their things off and were warm again, they looked out of the window. The campfire on the island had died out.
"She's gone away, of course," sighed Ruth. "But I would like to know what she was there for."
"One of the mysteries of life," said Helen, as she made ready for bed. "Dear me, but I'm tired!"
She was asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. Not so Ruth. The latter lay awake some time wondering about the odd girl on the island and her errand there.
Ruth Fielding had another girl's troubles on her mind, however—and a girl much closer to her. The girl on the island merely teased her imagination. Rebecca Frayne's difficulties seemed much more important to Ruth.
Of course, there was no real reason for Ruth to take up cudgels for her odd classmate. Indeed, she did not feel that she could do that, for she was quite convinced that Rebecca Frayne was wrong. Nevertheless, she was very sorry for the girl. The trouble over the tam-o'-shanter had become the most talked-of incident of the school term. For the several following days Rebecca was scarcely seen outside her room, save in going to and from her classes.
She did not again appear in the dining hall. How she arranged about meals Ruth and her friends could not imagine. Then the housekeeper admitted to Ruth that she had allowed the lonely girl to get her own little meals in her room, as she had cooking utensils and an alcohol lamp.
"It is not usually allowed, I know. But Miss Frayne seems to have come to college prepared to live in just that way. She is a small eater, anyway. And—well, anything to avoid friction."
"Of course," Ruth said to Helen and Jennie Stone, "lots of girls live in furnished rooms and get their own meals—working girls and students. But it is not a system generally allowed at college, and at Ardmore especially. We shall hear from the faculty about it before the matter is done with."
"Well, we're not doing it," scoffed Jennie. "And that Rebecca Frayne is behaving like a chump."
"But how she does stick to that awful tam!" groaned Helen.
"Stubborn as a mule," agreed Jennie.
"I saw her with another hat on to-day," said Ruth, reflectively.
"That's so! It was the one she wore the day she arrived," Helen said quickly. "A summer hat. I wonder what she did bring in that trunk, anyway? She has displayed no such charming array of finery as I expected."
Ruth did not discuss this point. She was more interested in the state of Rebecca's mind, though, of course, there was not much time for her to give to anything but her studies and regular duties now, for as the term advanced the freshmen found their hours pretty well filled.
Scrub teams for certain indoor sports had been made up, and even Jennie Stone took up the playing of basketball with vigor. She was really losing flesh. She kept a card tacked upon her door on which she set down the fluctuations of her bodily changes daily. When she lost a whole pound in weight she wrote it down in red ink.
Their activities kept the three friends well occupied, both physically and mentally. Yet Ruth Fielding could not feel wholly satisfied or content when she knew that one of her mates was in trouble. She had taken an interest in Rebecca Frayne at the beginning of the semester; yet of all the freshmen Rebecca was the one whom she knew the least.
"And that poor girl needs somebody for a friend—I feel it!" Ruth told herself. "Of course, she is to blame for the situation in which she now is. But for that very reason she ought to have somebody with whom to talk it over."
Ruth determined to be that confidant of the girl who seemed to wish no associate and no confidant. She began to loiter in the corridors between recitation hours and at odd times. Whenever she knocked on Rebecca's door there was no reply. Other girls who had tried it quickly gave up their sympathetic attentions. If the foolish girl wished for no friends, let her go her own way. That became the attitude of the freshman class. Of course, the sophomores followed the lead of the seniors and the juniors, having as little to do with the unfortunate girl as possible.
But the day and hour came at last when Ruth chanced to be right at hand when Rebecca Frayne came in and unlocked her room door. Her arms were full of small packages. Ruth knew that she had walked all the way to the grocery store on the edge of Greenburg, which the college girls often patronized.
It had been a long, cold walk, and Rebecca's fingers were numb. She dropped a paper bag—and it contained eggs!
Now, it is quite impossible to hide the fact of a dropped egg. At another time Ruth might have laughed; but now she soberly retrieved the paper bag before the broken eggs could do much damage, and stepped into the room after the nervous Rebecca.
"Oh, thank you!" gasped the girl. "Put—put them down anywhere. Thank you!"
"My goodness!" said Ruth, laughing, "you can't put broken eggs downanywhere. Don't you see they are runny?"
"Never mind, Miss Fielding——"
"Oh! you've a regular kitchenette here, haven't you?" said Ruth, emboldened to look behind a curtain. "How cunning. I'll put these eggs in this clean dish. Mercy, but they are scrambled!"
"Don't trouble, Miss Fielding. You are very kind."
"But scrambled eggs are pretty good, at that," Ruth went on, unheeding the other girl's nervousness. "If you can only get the broken shells out of them," and she began coolly to do this with a fork. "I should think you would not like eating alone, Rebecca."
The other girl stared at her. "How can I help it?" she asked harshly.
"Just by getting a proper tam and stop being stubborn," Ruth told her.
"Miss Fielding!" cried Rebecca, her face flushing. "Do you think I do this for—for fun?"
"You must. It isn't a disease, is it?" and Ruth laughed aloud, determined to refuse to take the other's tragic words seriously.
"You—you are unbearable!" gasped Rebecca.
"No, I'm not. I want to be your friend," Ruth declared boldly. "I want you to have other friends, too. No use flocking by one's self at college. Why, my dear girl! you are missing all that is best in college life."
"I'd like to know whatisbest in college life!" burst out Rebecca Frayne, sullenly.
"Friendship. Companionship. The rubbing of one mind against another," Ruth said promptly.
"Pooh!" returned the startled Rebecca. "I wouldn't want to rub my mind against some of these girls' minds. All I ever hear them talk about is dress or amusements."
"I don't think you know many of the other girls well enough to judge the calibre of their minds," said Ruth, gently.
"And why don't I?" demanded Rebecca, still with a sort of suppressed fury.
"We all judge more or less by appearances," Ruth admitted slowly. "I presumeyou, too, were judged that way."
"What do you mean, Miss Fielding?" asked Rebecca, more mildly.
"When you came here to Ardmore you made a first impression. We all do," Ruth said.
"Yes," Rebecca admitted, with a slight curl of her lip. She was naturally a proud-looking girl, and she seemed actually haughty now. "I was mistaken foryou, I believe."
Ruth laughed heartily at that.
"I should be a good friend of yours," she said. "It was a great sell on those sophomores. They had determined to make poor little me suffer for some small notoriety I had gained at boarding school."
"I never went to boarding school," snapped Rebecca. "I never wasanywheretill I came to college. Just to our local schools. I worked hard, let me tell you, to pass the examinations to get in here."
"And why don't you let your mind broaden and get the best there is to be had at Ardmore?" Ruth demanded, quickly. "The girls misunderstand you. I can see that. We freshmen have got to bow our heads to the will of the upper classes. It doesn't hurt—much," and she laughed again.
"Do you think I am wearing this old tam because I am stubborn?" demanded the other girl, again with that fierceness that seemed so strange in one so young.
"Why—aren't you?"
"No."
"Why do you wear it, then?" asked Ruth, wonderingly.
"Because I cannot afford to buy another!"
Rebecca Frayne said this in so tense a voice that Ruth was fairly staggered. The girl of the Red Mill gazed upon the other's flaming face for a full minute without making any reply. Then, faintly, she said:
"I—I didn't understand, Rebecca. We none of us do, I guess. You came here in such style! That heavy trunk and those bags——"
"All out of our attic," said the other, sharply. "Did you think them filled with frocks and furbelows? See here!"
Ruth had already noticed the packages of papers piled along one wall of the room. Rebecca pointed to them.
"Out of our attic, too," she said, with a scornful laugh that was really no laugh at all. "Old papers that have lain there since the Civil War."
"But, Rebecca——"
"Why did I do it?" put in the other, in the same hard voice. "Because I was a little fool. Because I did not understand.
"I didn't know just what college was like. I never talked with a girl from college in my life. I thought this was a place where only rich girls were welcome."
"Oh, Rebecca!" cried Ruth. "That isn't so."
"I see it now," agreed the other girl, shortly. "But we always have had to make a bluff at our house. SinceIcan remember, at least. Grandfather was wealthy; but our generation is as poor as Job's turkey.
"I didn't want to appear poor when I arrived here; so I got out the old bags and the big trunk, filled them with papers, and brought them along. A friend lent me that car I arrived in. I—I thought I'd make a splurge right at first, and then my social standing would not be questioned."
"Oh, Rebecca! How foolish," murmured Ruth.
"Don't say that!" stormed the girl. "I see that I started all wrong. But I can't help it now," and suddenly she burst into a passion of weeping.