The Grand Parade, “including every single member of the entire show,” was scheduled to start promptly at two. The parade was necessarily held in sections, as all hands were needed for each section. The clock in a neighboring steeple had not finished chiming the hour when there was an unearthly blare of trumpets and crashing of drums, and the band issued from the entrance of the Open Door Lodge. Nyoda led the band and made a stunning drum major in a fur hat a foot high, made out of a muff. The members of the band were dressed as Spanish troubadours in costumes of blinding scarlet, with their instruments hung around their neck by ribbons. They marched around the ring at a lively pace, playing the music of a popular football song, which made the audience cheer wildly, for it was largely composed of students from the two great rival schools, Washington High and Carnegie Mechanic. In the wake of the troubadours stumbled an enormously fat clown in a suit half red and half white, blowing up a rubber bladder, which emitted a plaintive squawk. Loud applause greeted every move the clown made and when he accidentally stumbled into a hole and measured his length on the ground the small boys shrieked in ecstasy.
The band made a stately and melodious exit in the House of the Open Door and once inside broke ranks in haste to prepare for the second section of the parade—the procession of the animals. This was a much more complicated matter than the band had been, but it had been so well rehearsed that the crowd, who were being amused by the antics of the clown, had not time to grow impatient before they were ready. Shrieks of delight went up at the appearance of the five ferocious animals from Nowhere—The Camelk,The Crabbit,The Alligatortoise,The KangaroosterandThe Salmonkey, and they had to go around the ring five times before being allowed to retire. The parade being such an unqualified success, it is needless to say that the circus proper went even better. The actors had all worked themselves up into the right mood for it.
The magician gave more entertainment than he had counted on, for the mice, which he had concealed in his pocket ready to produce from under the folded handkerchief, bit him before their turn in the show came, and the beholders were startled to see the magician suddenly spring into the air, uttering a wild yell and, thrusting his hand into his hip pocket, throw the cause of the disturbance half-way across the ring. The Fattest Man on Earth, who was Slim, with the addition of several pillows fore and aft, mounted the small stage and laboriously sat on a toothpick, breaking down the stage in the process; and the Inja Rubber Man did such amazing contortions that the audience began to hold their breath for fear he would never come untangled again.
When it happened to be her turn to go out in one of the numbers Hinpoha looked the audience over to see if Katherine Adams had come in response to her invitation, but she did not see her. But, while looking for Katherine, her eye was caught by a strange figure, the like of which she had never seen before. She was a woman, old and bent, and dressed in such old-fashioned clothes that she looked like a caricature out of a funny page. She had on a tight green basque, which flared out below the waist in a ripple and a very full red skirt, held out in a ridiculous curve by that atrocity of bygone days known as a “bustle.” She was climbing stiffly up and down among the spectators trying to sell papers which she was crying in a shrill voice. As she went up and down among the benches she held up her skirt in her hand, disclosing purple stockings and enormous flapping slippers. Wherever she went she was followed by a ripple of laughter; the audience seemed to be getting as much fun out of her as they were out of the show. Hinpoha told Nyoda about it when she was in the barn again and Nyoda asked all the players not to do anything to drive her away, as she was no doubt trying to make an honest living by selling papers wherever there was a crowd, and she was adding an unexpected touch to the circus to amuse the audience.
The bareback rider proved a real sensation. Up to that time the numbers had merely been in the nature of stunts—clever and original and highly diverting, and yet something which any group of young people could produce. But here was something different. Veronica was so dark that in her costume she looked like a real gypsy, and as she was not yet well known she was not recognized. She came in riding a beautiful black horse that belonged to Mr. Evans, and, after galloping around the ring several times and making him rear up on his hind legs until the audience thought she must slide off, she set him to leaping obstacles, keeping her seat all the while with amazing ease. There was a touch of realism in her act, too, which made the audience tingle for a while. In their eagerness to see the horse and the daring rider the children down in the front row had pressed forward until they were fairly under the ropes. Without warning a little girl lost her balance and fell out into the ring, rolling right into the path of the galloping horse. An exclamation of horror went up from the crowd, and many covered their eyes with their hands. The others, gazing as if fascinated, saw the horse in obedience to a quick command leap into the air with all four feet and come down several feet beyond the little form on the ground. Shouts rose up from every side and cheers for the skilful horsewoman who had been able to avert a tragedy when it was too late to turn aside. But Veronica sat unmoved, a graceful statue on the beautiful horse, looking out over the audience with brooding eyes that saw them not.
Of course thepiece de resistanceof the whole show was the trick mule, Sandhelo. He had been the most widely advertised feature and had been the means of selling the most tickets. The small boys came lured by the promise of a free ride after the show and could hardly wait for that time to come. His appearance in the ring was hailed with tumultuous applause. Led by the clown, who played the mouth organ constantly to assure his continuous locomotion, he did his tricks over and over again, lying down as if dead when Slim played “John Brown’s Body,” and springing to his feet with a lively bray when he played “Yankee Doodle”; and sitting up on the table and waving his fore feet at the audience while he tossed a lump of sugar on his nose.
Then the clown tried to ride him and fell off, first on one side and then the other, and after several vain attempts offered a quarter to anyone in the audience who would come out and ride him around the ring. As the players along knew that Sandhelo would only go to music, they anticipated no little fun from this business. Sandhelo was perfectly safe to ride—he was as gentle as a kitten—but his refusal to stir when commanded made him appear a very balky mule indeed, and there was no response to Slim’s invitation for somebody to come out and ride him. Even the small boys, who were eager to ride him, preferred to wait until the show was over before making the trial.
“Don’t all come at once,” appealed Slim in derision. “One at a time, please. Who’ll ride the famous trick mule, Sandhelo, around the ring and win the handsome prize of twenty-five cents, a whole quarter of a dollar?” Still no volunteers. Sandhelo yawned and looked bored to death. Slim stretched out his hands to the audience imploringly.
Suddenly there was a commotion at one end of the seats and down from the top of the picnic tables, where the raised seats were, there climbed the little old woman who had gone around selling papers. “I’ll ride him for twenty-five cents,” she cackled in her high shrill voice. And she hobbled across the ring to where Sandhelo stood. The players were ready to hug themselves with joy. Here was a real circus-y touch they had not counted on.
“Aren’t you afraid she’ll get hurt?” whispered Hinpoha to Nyoda.
“No danger,” returned Nyoda. “Sandhelo won’t go a step without the mouth organ.”
The little old woman, her back bent almost double, shuffled over and grasped Sandhelo, not by the bridle, but by the cockade on his head. Then she suddenly straightened up and a gasp of astonishment went around the circle. She was taller than the tallest of them. Without assistance from anyone she climbed on Sandhelo’s back and sat with her face toward his tail. The audience, suspecting that it was a “put-up job,” and this was another stunt, roared its appreciation, but the players looked at each other in utter bewilderment. Who was this strange character?
Sandhelo was a very small donkey, standing no higher than a Shetland pony, and when the old lady was seated on his back her feet dragged on the ground. Calmly crossing them underneath his body, she gave his tail a smart jerk, accompanied by the shrill command, “Giddap!” Sandhelo, mortified to death at the undignified position of his rider, had but one idea in his mind—to escape from the gibing crowd and hide his head in his stable. Around the ring he flew as fast as his tiny legs would carry him, the old woman sticking to him like a burr, her bonnet strings flying in the wind, her big slippers flapping against his sides, and her shrill voice urging him on to greater speed. The act brought down the house and a whole row of folding camp chairs collapsed under the strain of the applause.
Beside himself with rage and shame, Sandhelo bolted into the barn and carried his strange rider into the midst of the company of players. Sliding off his back, she looked around the ring of curious faces before her with little twinkling gray eyes. Then she held out her hand suggestively. “Where’s the quarter I git fer ridin’ the mule?” she asked. Something in her voice awakened a memory in Hinpoha’s mind. In a twinkling she was carried back to the incident at Raymond’s that noon when Miss Parker stopped to present her cousin from the west. Surely there never were two such voices! At the same time Hinpoha noticed that the old woman’s gray hair was sliding back on her head, and a long wisp of yellowish hair was hanging out underneath. She stared at the curious figure in growing wonder, and the woman stared back at her with a knowing grin that became wider every moment. Then with a quick movement the old woman snatched off a gray wig, mopped a damp handkerchief over her face, produced a pair of glasses from some pocket in the wide skirt, and stood before them the same awkward, ungainly creature that Hinpoha had met that noon. It was Katherine Adams, Miss Parker’s cousin.
Such a babel there was when Hinpoha recognized the strange comedian and presented her to the others! The waiting audience was completely forgotten as they listened fascinated while Katherine explained how she had come “by special invitation” to the circus and had decided that people who had “pep” enough to get up a circus were worth knowing, and the best way to get acquainted with the players was to be in the show herself. So she had joined the company without the formality of being asked.
“You’re appointed assistant clown for the remainder of the circus,” said Nyoda.
“And you’re invited to the spread upstairs afterwards,” said Hinpoha.
“It’s time for the Chair-iot Race,” said the Captain warningly, and the players returned to their duties with a guilty start. The new comedian proved such a diversion and put the regular clown up to so many tricks that he would never have thought of by himself, that the audience refused to go home when the big show was over, and called for encore after encore.
“Let’s get her to sell cocoa,” suggested Gladys; “they’ll buy from her when they wouldn’t from us.”
So Katherine, who up until a few hours ago had never heard of the Winnebagos and Sandwiches, did more for them in the way of dispensing cups of cocoa at five cents a cup than they were able to do for themselves. She made such inimitably droll speeches in her efforts to advertise her wares that the audience crowded around her just to hear her talk, and bought and bought until the huge kettles were empty and the paper box till was full. The small boys crowded around the Ringmaster, demanding their ride on the trick mule, and, tearing himself away from the fascinating orator, he betook himself to the barn, followed by the whole string of would-be riders. But when he arrived there the stall was empty and Sandhelo was nowhere to be found. Loud chorus of disappointment from the small boys. The Captain turned their interest in Sandhelo to account by enlisting them in the search for him, but it was vain. Nowhere could they find a trace of him. His shame at the indignity heaped upon him that afternoon had been too great. Finding his stall left open in the excitement he had escaped and wandered off while the attention of everyone was riveted on the antics of the new comedian, and hid his head among new scenes and faces. The small boys finally gave up and went home, partly consoled by the assurance that if Sandhelo ever turned up again the promised ride would still be theirs, and the players, rather exhausted, but exulting over the success of the performance, gathered in the Winnebago room of the Open Door Lodge for the jollification spread.
Katherine Adams was the lioness of the evening. Begged for a speech, she obligingly mounted the table and held a discourse that left her hearers limp with merriment. What she said was sidesplitting enough, but her gestures, her expression and her voice were beyond description. She spoke in a lazy southern drawl, mixed up with a nasal twang, and the peculiarly veiled, husky quality of her voice gave it a sound the like of which was never heard before. She still wore the big flapping slippers and had much ado to keep them on when she climbed on the table with the mincing air of a young miss making an elocution lesson. She planted her feet carefully, heels together and toes apart, taking several minutes in the operation, and then surveyed them with a silly smirk of satisfaction that was convulsing. When her discourse became a little heated the feet suddenly flew around and toed in until both heels and toes were in a straight line. At the ripple of laughter which this called forth she looked down at her feet with a sad, pained expression and carefully set them right again. A few moments later she again waxed eloquent and again the feet turned, seemingly of themselves, and this time her toes pointed outward until toes and heels were all one straight line. The shrieks of delight made her look down again, with that same puzzled, pained expression, and again she set them right in an affected manner.
When the speech was over the boys and girls begged her to do it again, and kept her speechifying until she declared she had no voice left to whisper. “You know I have to be very careful of my voice,” she said in a tone of confiding simplicity. “It’s so sweet that I’m afraid of cracking it all the time.”
Katherine was too good to be true. “Just like a character out of a book,” the delighted Winnebagos whispered to one another. Before the evening was over they had unanimously decided to urge—not merely invite, mind you, but urge—her to become a Winnebago. Katherine was delighted with the idea and accepted the invitation with another convulsing speech. It seemed incredible to the girls that they had met her just that afternoon. It seemed as if they had known her always. She fitted into their group like a thumb on a hand. She was plied with slumgullion and every other delicacy, and her health was drunk in numerous cups of cocoa. The continual flow of banter which the Winnebagos usually kept up among themselves was hushed, and everyone was willing to put the soft pedal on her own speech if only Katherine would talk some more. She told fascinating things about her life on a big stock farm out in Arkansas.
“Are there any Indians around there?” asked Veronica, whose ideas of the American Far West were rather hazy and romantic.
“Indians!” said Katherine. “I should say there were! They’re something terrible. Why, you don’t dare hang your clothes on the line, because the Indians will shoot them full of arrows! And then,” she continued, as she saw Veronica’s eyes becoming saucerlike, “there are all kind of wild animals out there, too. We can’t keep milk standing around in the pantry because the wildcats come in and drink it up, and the bears shed their hair all over the carpet! Why, one day I came in from the yard and there was a rattlesnake curled up on the piano stool!”
The Winnebagos and the Sandwiches doubled up with merriment at her awful “yarns,” but Veronica believed every word of it.
“O Katherine, you awful thing, I’m in love with you,” cried Hinpoha, in rather mixed metaphor, and drew her down on the bearskin bed beside her. “Goodness, Veronica, don’t look so excited. All the Indians there are in this country now are on reservations, and they’re entirely peaceable. You mustn’t believe a word she says.”
The jollification supper ended in a hilarious Virginia Reel, which hardly anyone could dance for laughing at Katherine’s big slippers, as she shuffled up and down the line.
“What a day this has been,” sighed Hinpoha to Gladys, with whom she was spending the night, as she sank down on the bed with all her clothes on. “We’ve made enough money to equip the Sandwiches’ gym be-yoo-tifully; we’ve made Veronica famous as a horsewoman; we’ve lost our trick mule and gained a new member for the Winnebagos. In the classic words of our gallant Captain, I think that’s ‘going some.’”
Katherine’s entry into High School life was a complete success—one of those rare, astonishing successes that happen about once in a decade. The regular members of the class, who have been together since the beginning, will by constant effort have attained a fair measure of popularity by the fourth year, when suddenly a personality will appear out of the vast and seize and hold the center of the stage. Katherine’s spectacular exploit at the Sandebago Circus was heralded far and wide, and when she entered school the following Monday morning she found herself already famous. Everywhere she was pointed out as “the girl who had ridden the donkey,” “the girl with the funny voice,” “the girl who made the screaming speeches.” Teachers agreed unanimously that she was the most erratically brilliant student they had ever had in their classes—when she could remember to turn her work in. Her compositions were read out in class and brought down the house. When she rose to recite you could hear a pin drop. It was an open secret that the two English teachers had drawn lots to see who would get her, and not a few pupils suddenly discovered conflicts in their recitations and got themselves changed into the class where Katherine was.
Her absent-mindedness soon became proverbial. Odd shoes—gloves of two different colors—hat on hind side before, or somebody else’s hat altogether—these were everyday occurrences. Her friends told with chuckles how she had climbed one flight of stairs too many on her way to Math class and walked into a Freshman English class, her mind busy working out the solution of a problem in geometry. When some other Katherine was called upon to recite she rose solemnly and, going to the board, gave a masterly demonstration of a knotty theorem in solid geometry, and then marched out with the class, serenely unconscious of her mistake, oblivious to the laughter of the class and the amusement of the teacher, who let her go on without interruption to see how far she would go. Her bewilderment when asked by the regular geometry teacher to explain why she had cut class that morning was comical.
Possessing neither beauty, style, pretty clothes, nor all the dozen other things that make the ordinary girl popular, her very unusualness gave her a distinction, and inside of two weeks she was the best-known girl in the whole school. To be counted as one of her friends was an honor, and to be able to say, “Katherine told me this,” or, “Katherine did this up at our house,” was to incite the envy of less favored ones. The Uranians, the most exclusive and select girl’s society in the school, voted her in as a member because they must have all the prominent girls, although they generally scorned both worth and brains, if clothed in poor garments, and great was their chagrin to find that their disdained rivals, the clever and democratic Dramatic Club, had held a special meeting and taken her in the afternoon before. Urania had not noticed that Katherine had been wearing the Dramatic Club pin a whole day because she had stuck it over a hole in her stocking which she did not have time to mend.
How the Winnebagos exulted because Hinpoha had been polite enough to invite her to the circus and she had consequently landed in their bosom the first thing! No other group of girls would ever know her as intimately as they would. The Camp Fire idea appealed to her from the start. The Open Door Lodge was a paradise for her. The ladder stairs were a constant source of delight.
“One would think you had never climbed a ladder before,” said Hinpoha, watching curiously as Katherine climbed up and down and up again just for the fun of the thing. Katherine draped her feet around a rung to support herself and sat on the top bar.
“I never did,” she said simply.
“Never climbed a ladder!” said Hinpoha incredulously. “Why, where did you live?”
“In Arkansas,” answered Katherine significantly. “Do you know,” she went on, “that until I came east I had never seen a flight of stairs?I had never seen a flight of stairs!” she repeated, as Hinpoha and the other girls in the Lodge gasped unbelievingly. “We lived in a one-story house, the floor level with the ground, so you just walked in from the outside without going up steps. The house was in the middle of a big farm, as level and flat as this floor. I rode ten miles to school and that was built just like our house. Oh, of course I knew there were such things as stairs, because I had seen them in pictures, but until I came here I had never seen any.”
“But didn’t you see any when you went traveling?” asked Hinpoha, still incredulous.
“Never went traveling,” returned Katherine. “It took considerable hustling to stay right where we were. One year the locusts ate up everything, down to the clothes on the line, and we couldn’t get enough feed to fatten the stock; the next year there were prairie fires that licked the earth as clean as a plate; one year the cattle all died of disease, and so on. It wasn’t until this year that we came out ahead enough to send me here to school.”
And when the girls heard what a hard time she had had they adored her more than ever because she could be so funny when she had had so little to be funny about.
Another thing that charmed her beyond measure was the color of the autumn leaves. The Winnebagos could hardly pull her past a tree. “There was only one tree in sight on our farm,” she would tell them, “and that wasn’t green like the trees are in the east; it was just a dusty, greenish gray. And the leaves didn’t turn colors in the fall; they just withered up and dropped off. Oh-h-h, look at that one over there—isn’t it just too gorgeous for words?”
When we said that both teachers and pupils regarded Katherine as too good to be true, we should have made one exception. That exception was Miss Snively, the Senior Oratory teacher. Most of the teachers were liked by some scholars and disliked by some, according to disposition or circumstance; but all pupils agreed heartily that they did not like Miss Snively. She was neither old nor bad looking; in fact, she was rather handsome when you saw her for the first time, but she was so bitingly sarcastic that her classes stood in fear and trembling of being singled out for some poisoned shaft. Sarcasm and ridicule are the most deadly weapons to use against boys and girls of the high school age. They are not old enough to know how to come back, and can only nurse the smart and writhe impotently. And of all classes to have a sarcastic teacher, Senior Oratory is the worst. It is bad enough to stand up and make a speech with appropriate gestures before a sympathetic teacher who corrects diplomatically and never, never laughs, but to have one who eyes you coldly all the while and then gets up and does it the way you did, only ten times worse—more buckets of tears had been shed over Senior Oratory than all other subjects put together.
When Katherine entered the class Miss Snively took immediate exception to her voice. Miss Snively’s particular hobby was Woman’s Voice. Hers was high and artificially sweet—it fairly oozed syrup—and she did her level best to make her girl pupils imitate it. So when Katherine began reading in her husky nasal drawl, Miss Snively promptly read the piece after her, imitating her voice as best she could, and then looked around the room for the laughter of the pupils which would complete Katherine’s mortification. But nobody laughed. They all sympathized with Katherine. They had been in her shoes themselves. The blood mounted to Katherine’s temples when she realized that Miss Snively was deliberately making fun of her, and a hurt look came into her eyes. She was sensitive about her voice, even if she did get endless fun out of it. When Miss Snively handed her the book again and bade her in sarcastic tones to read further for the edification of the class, Katherine sat silent. To her horror she found there was a lump in her throat and she would most likely break down utterly if she tried to say a word. She did not mean to be stubborn—she was only waiting for control of her voice, for she was too proud to let Miss Snively see how badly she felt. So she sat silent, miserably twisting her handkerchief in her hands.
“Go back to your session room,” said Miss Snively sharply, who boasted of her summary measures with her scholars. So Katherine left the room in disgrace. From that time on there was a marked antagonism between those two. Miss Snively lost no chance to make Katherine ridiculous in class, and, while Katherine had too much respect for teachers to openly defy her, she “took off” her affected manners to delighted audiences outside of class, and Miss Snively knew it and was powerless to stop it. But, outside of her skirmishes with Miss Snively, Katherine’s progress through school was a triumphal march.
In every school, and Washington High was no exception, there will be found various elements—some good and some bad. Color rushes, which had given an annual vent to the mysterious feeling of hostility which always exists between junior and senior classes, had been abolished. But the feeling still existed, and manifested itself in various skirmishes. The year before, when the juniors gave their annual dance, the seniors carried away the refreshments. On the night of the senior dance the lights refused to work, and, of course, the juniors were at the bottom of the mystery. The principal, thinking rightly that pranks of this kind reflected little credit on his school, wrathfully declared that if any of the seniors attempted to spoil the juniors’ party this year there would be trouble. But there were certain lawless spirits in the senior class who still thought pranks of that nature funny, and it was not long before plans were hatching as merrily as before. It was all very vague, what was going to be done and who was going to do it, but it was in the air, and everybody who was up on school affairs knew there was a storm brewing.
The first definite news came to the Winnebagos through Katherine. “I’ve been asked to a select party,” she announced one night up in the Open Door Lodge, spreading her bony hands out before the blazing log on the hearth. “It’s something like the Boston Tea Party,” she went on.
“Must be going to be quite an affair,” said Gladys, who was stirring fudge over the fire. “May we inquire where?”
“Oh, girls,” said Katherine, with a serious face, “do you know what’s in the wind? The Seniors are to put a lot of live mice through the windows in the middle of the Junior dance.”
“The Seniors?” exclaimed Hinpoha and Gladys in one breath. “What Seniors?”
“Oh, Charlie Hughes and Eddie Myers and that bunch. You know the half dozen that go around together and call themselves the Clan? Well, those. They were mixed up in the business last year.” Although Katherine was a newcomer in the school she was already well versed in its history.
“How did you find it out?” asked Hinpoha.
“Cora Burton told me.” Cora was one of Katherine’s devoted admirers and tried hard to be chummy with her, although Katherine did not care for her in the least. “Cora’s a particular friend of Charlie Hughes, and she and some other girls are going along to see the fun. But she couldn’t keep it secret and told me today and asked if I wanted to go along.”
“Oh, Katherine, you’re not going?” said Sahwah anxiously.
The disgusted expression on Katherine’s face was answer enough.
“Hadn’t we better tell some of the teachers?” asked Gladys, pausing in her stirring. “I wish Nyoda were here.” Miss Kent had been called out of town on account of the death of an aunt and would be away until after the party.
“We ought to, I think,” said Hinpoha.
Katherine stood up beside the fireplace, and resting one elbow on the shelf humped her shoulders in her favorite attitude and began to speak. “Girls,” she said, “this Junior-Senior business is going to be an awful mess, and the result will be that somebody will be expelled or not permitted to graduate. Students are going to take sides in the affair and there will be no end of hard feelings. I for one don’t care to play the rôle of informer. So far we Winnebagos have kept entirely out of anything of this kind and wish we could get along without having any connection with this.”
“But the teachers would never tell who told them,” said Hinpoha.
“The teachers wouldn’t,” answered Katherine, “but Cora Burton would. And then maybe someone would say that I had been in the thing to start with and then grew afraid and told on the others. You know how those stories grow. Stay out of it altogether, say I, and avoid publicity.”
“But don’t you think it’s our duty to try and stop such horrid pranks?” asked Hinpoha doubtfully.
“I certainly do,” said Katherine, “and if we were the only ones who suspected anything it would be different. But all the teachers know that something is going to happen and they will be on the lookout. And the Juniors know it also, and they will be on their guard. I doubt very much if those mice ever get into the room, even if we keep silent.”
And the Winnebagos, remembering Hinpoha’s sad experience the year before, decided that it was perhaps better after all to keep out of the affair altogether.
“I thought you’d see it my way after you’d considered all sides,” said Katherine, reaching out her long fingers and taking three pieces of fudge off the plate where it was cooling, “but that isn’t what I wanted to talk about tonight. It’s Cora Burton that bothers me. She isn’t a bad sort of girl, and I can’t see why she should want to get mixed up in that sort of thing, especially when there’s bound to be trouble later. If she were to be seen with those boys Friday night it would go hard with her. I suppose she thinks she’s right in the swim being connected with a prank, because she isn’t very popular otherwise. The other girls that are in it aren’t ladylike and it’s not much use getting after them, but Cora’s different, somehow. I wish something could be done about it.” And she crunched a piece of fudge between her teeth with violence.
“We might get up a show that night and each one bring a friend, and you could invite Cora,” suggested Sahwah. “Counter attraction, you know.”
The suggestion was voted a good one and promptly acted upon. But Cora declined Katherine’s cordial invitation. “What’s to be done now?” asked Katherine of the hastily called meeting of the Winnebagos. “Our counter attraction didn’t work.”
“Girls,” said Gladys solemnly, “I believe it’s our duty to keep Cora away from that business somehow. If we were smart enough we’d find a way. I don’t believe we ought to let the matter drop and say if she wants to get into trouble let her do it, it’s none of our affair. Itisour affair, because we’re pledged to Give Service, and it would be doing Cora a great service to keep her out of this. If she’s weak and we’re strong we must hold her out of water. You remember what Dr. Harper said at the lecture about saving people from themselves. Well, I think we ought to save Cora from herself.”
The phrase, “Save Cora from herself,” sounded very fine to the ears of the Winnebagos, and they decided that Cora must be saved from herself at all costs. But how?
“I think I can manage it,” said Katherine, who had been buried deep in thought all the while the last discussion was going on. “It’ll be quite an undertaking, but the end justifies the means.”
“Tell us,” begged the girls.
“Why, it’s this,” said Katherine. “I shall tell Cora that I’ve changed my mind and want to go with her Friday night and will meet her on the corner of her street at eight o’clock. When I’ve met her I’ll tell her that I left my purse up here and ask her to come along till I get it. You know she doesn’t live very far from here. Once up here we’ll keep her safely all evening. Oh, I know that holding people against their will isn’t one of the rules of polite society, but in her case I think we’re justified. She’ll thank us for it before very long. And we’ll try to make it pleasant for her. We’ll give the show just as we intended and have a spread and her captivity won’t seem long.”
As there seemed no other way out of the difficulty, Katherine’s plan was accepted.
“It’s working fine,” she confided to the Winnebagos the next day. “Cora was tickled to pieces because I wanted to go with her. She agreed to meet me on the corner, as I suggested, and we’re both going to wear green veils so we won’t be recognized so easily. Hoop la!” and she did a double shuffle with her toes turned in down the aisle of the empty class room where the girls had gathered.
On Friday night the Winnebagos met early in the House of the Open Door. Mrs. Evans, Gladys’ mother, was acting as leader tonight in the absence of Nyoda. She had been let into the secret about Cora and under the circumstances thought that their action was right. Cora lived with an old uncle, who was stone deaf and didn’t care a rap what she did, so there was no use talking to her folks about it. Several girl friends of the Winnebagos were present, all having raptures over the decorations of the Lodge, and watching with interest the waving curtain in the corner, behind which Sahwah was making herself up as a Topsy for their entertainment later on. Gladys was making sandwiches in another corner and lamenting because the bread knife was broken half off, and was accusing Sahwah of prying bricks apart with it, when stealthy footsteps sounded on the walk below, together with the noise of the door being pushed back quietly. Gladys heard it and started nervously. She was beginning to feel rather embarrassed at the thought of meeting Cora Burton, and wondered just how it would come out, anyway. She wished it were safely over.
Katherine and her prisoner seemed a long time in reaching the foot of the ladder. Did Cora suspect something, perhaps, and was refusing to mount? Gladys strained her ears to listen and thought she heard a smothered giggle from below, but she could not be sure. The next minute the lights flashed below and the patent signal knock of the Sandwiches sounded on the wall.
“Here come the boys!” cried Hinpoha, hastening to answer the signal with a series of mystic thumps on the wall with the poker.
Then the Captain’s voice sounded at the foot of the ladder. “How many of you are up there?”
“Five,” answered Hinpoha, “and three guests.”
“Is Miss Kent there?”
“No.”
“What are you doing?”
“We’re going to have a show. Want to come up?”
“Well, maybe, later,” answered the Captain. “Won’t you come down a minute? We’ve got something to show you.” And again Gladys thought she heard a smothered giggle from below stairs.
The girls trooped down the ladder, Sahwah running out with her face blackened and her hair in tiny pigtails, to see what the excitement was about. All seven of the Sandwiches stood there with sparkling eyes and prenaturally solemn faces. On the floor stood a good-sized box.
“What’s in the box?” asked Sahwah.
“Oh, nothing,” answered the Captain, trying to speak indifferently.
“There is too, something,” said Sahwah, looking critically at the express tags fastened to it. “Oh, I know what is is,” she cried, suddenly jumping up and clapping her hands in glee. “Your uncle in Boston has sent you the electric motor he promised you!”
The Captain tried to look indifferent and failed utterly. His lips would twitch into a smile in spite of all he could do.
“Do open it and let us see it,” said Hinpoha, and all the girls crowded closely around.
“You may have the honor, Miss Brewster,” said the Captain, bowing formally to Sahwah. The nails had been drawn and all Sahwah had to do was lift off the cover of the box, which she did with a great flourish. The next moment the girls sprang back in dismay and scattered wildly. The box was full of live mice, which jumped out and ran in all directions. Screaming at the tops of their voices the girls fled toward the ladder and crowded up as fast as they could go. Sahwah jumped for the swinging rings, which hung from the ceiling of the barn, and dangled safely in mid-air, making horrible faces at the Captain, at which he laughed uproariously. Sahwah and the Captain were always playing tricks on each other and this time she had to admit that he had scored heavily. So the Captain jeered and Sahwah vowed vengeance and the other Sandwiches stood around and laughed until their sides ached, for Sahwah, with blackened face and Topsy braids, hanging in the rings and sputtering, was the funniest sight imaginable.
“Joke’s over now, boys,” said the Captain, when the mice had run around the barn for several minutes. “We’ve had enough of a good thing. Let’s catch them and put them back into the box.”
The girls above sat around the ladder opening and watched the proceedings.
“Wherever did you get so many mice, boys?” asked Mrs. Evans.
“We found them,” said the Captain, “all boxed up, just like this, They were right out in the middle of that field over there. We were on the way over here and saw the box and looked in. When we saw what it was we thought we could play a joke on the girls. So we brought them along. Looks as though someone had fixed them that way for a joke. Probably were going to send them by express. They were in an express box, although it was not nailed shut.”
The girls began to look at one another significantly. The same thought came into all their minds at once. Were not these the mice that were to attend the Junior party?
“The joke is on the Seniors, after all,” said Hinpoha.
“What do you mean?” asked the boys. “The joke is on the Seniors?”
“Shall we tell them?” asked Hinpoha.
“I don’t see any harm now,” said Gladys. “The scheme has collapsed like a pricked balloon.”
And they told the Sandwiches what they knew about the plot of the Senior boys to interrupt the Junior party.
“Wasn’t such a bad idea to try to play a joke on you girls after all, was it?” said the Captain. “Because if we hadn’t done it we wouldn’t have nipped their little scheme in the bud. We’ll play lots more jokes on them, won’t we, Slim? Don’t you girls think you ought to invite us up to supper to celebrate?”
“Not until the last mouse is back in the box,” said Gladys firmly.
The boys worked hard to catch them again and the girls sat above and cheered their efforts, and in the middle of it in came Katherine and her companion, swathed in green veils. There was such an uproar in the barn that Cora never noticed that Katherine locked the door and put the key in her pocket. Cora gave a great start at the sight of the mice, which was not all from fright, and the girls could not help enjoying the situation. What must be her thoughts by this time? But Cora, obeying the natural impulse of women at the sight of mice, fled up the ladder with Katherine. If she thought it odd that the barn was full of girls and boys when she had gained the impression that it was empty and dark, she made no sign, but stood still with her veil over her face. With all those horrible creatures running around the floor downstairs she made no move to escape.
“Won’t you take off your things?” asked Katherine, beginning gently to break the news to Cora that she was to stay for the evening. Without demur Cora unfastened her coat and slid it off and then took off her hat and veil. The girls stood as if turned to stone. The person who stood before them was not Cora Burton. It was Miss Snively.It was Miss Snively!
She looked around her with a sneering smile and a snapping light in her eyes. “You may think it was a master stroke on your part to lure me here and lock me in so I could not join the conspirators and thus find out who they were,” she said with biting emphasis. “But you shall pay dearly for this, my young friends. I know who you all are—you needn’t try to hide behinds the others, Gladys Evans—and the information I shall be able to give Mr. Jackson tonight is what he has been trying to find out for a long time. Katherine Adams, you are the ringleader of this affair, as we might have expected. I know all about the plan to put the mice into the dance hall, and while the boys downstairs who are getting them ready are not the ones I should have expected to be doing it, it is just like you to get strange boys to do it for you, hoping to get away unsuspected. But it didn’t work, I am happy to say. You are very clever, Miss Adams, but not clever enough. I overheard you asking Cora Burton to meet you on the corner this evening. I took the liberty of being there first. I thought I had deceived you perfectly, not knowing that you were bringing me right into the mouse’s nest, so to speak.”
She paused for breath and looked around her with an expression of relish at the consternation visible on the faces before her. For Katherine was staring at her with startled, unbelieving eyes; Gladys was clutching her mother’s arm in a frightened manner; Hinpoha had sunk weakly down on the bearskin bed, and Sahwah stood with her mouth open and the perspiration running down her face in black streaks, and the others were dumb with astonishment. The boys, not knowing just what was going on, but guessing that something was the matter, stood by the ladder opening, silently taking in the scene. The girls looked helplessly into each other’s eyes. Somebody must speak and explain. They all looked at Katherine.