CHAPTER XV
IN THE DUSK
The girls had crept closer and were near enough to hear what the men said.
The latter seemed to be on the far side of the boathouse. They had evidently neither seen nor heard the girls.
"I tell you, Jim, it was a slick job," came the low, gruff voice of one of the men.
"Theyarethe thieves!" whispered Sadie, and tugged at the arm that was still in Jo's grasp.
"Oh, hush!" cried the latter. "Listen!"
"It sure was," responded a second voice, lighter in timbre and less guarded, as though the speaker were a younger man than his companion. "It was so well done that Miss Romaine thinks it the work of some mischievous girls."
Both men laughed and the girls looked at each other inquiringly.
"That voice doesn't sound like a thief's voice to me," remarked Nan.
"Listen!" cried Jo again.
"The crooks are slick ones and they're probably responsible for some other small robberies in town," came the voice of the first speaker. "But we'll find 'em yet, you bet!"
"Sure—with Old Hawkeye on the job!" responded the younger voice in a chaffing way. "Well, we might as well go up to the Hall and report on what we've found."
"You mean what we haven't found!" retorted the other voice disgustedly.
The girls shrank back against the boathouse as two shadows detached themselves from the farther side of it and went off in the direction of the Hall.
Jessie began to giggle, and her merriment was contagious.
"Of all the idiots, we are the worst!" laughed Jo. "They are detectives or policemen or something or other on that order, and we took them for burglars!"
"That was the sheriff from Laurelton and his helper," Gladys explained. "My father knows the sheriff. His name is Ebenezer Crabb and Dad told me once he's so stupid he wouldn't know a crook if he saw one."
"That looks fine for our chance of catching the thieves," remarked Sadie, as they started toward the Hall again.
"Meanwhile everybody in the school is suspected of playing practical jokes," said Doris with a discontented shrug of her shoulders. "I declare, I'm beginning to feel guilty about it myself!"
"Anyway, there's one bit of luck for us," remarked Nan. "And that is that we didn't get here until after the robbery was committed."
"Yes," said Jo, looking very innocent. "We, at least, are above suspicion!"
Tired as they were, the three chums were so fascinated with their new surroundings and their new friends that the preliminary bell for "all lights out" found them still unwilling to go to their room.
"To-morrow's Sunday so we shall be expected to go to church in the morning," said Jessie, as they lingered in the hall for a last word. "But in the afternoon after dinner we'll show you all about the place."
"I want to see the tennis courts.Don'tforget the tennis courts," begged Nan.
"We won't forget the tennis courts," their new friends laughed, and with a last gay wave of the hand went off toward their own rooms.
The three girl chums were so full of the crowding experience of the day that they had expected to stay up for the best part of the night—surreptitiously of course and ready to jump into bed at the first sound in the corridor—discussing them.
But they had counted without the comfortable beds at Laurel Hall and their own complete exhaustion. Three heads had scarcely touched three pillows before three pairs of eyes closed in dreamless sleep.
That was the end of the first day at Laurel Hall.
After that several days flew by in rapid succession, each so crowded with pleasant experiences that the girls scarcely noticed their going.
Long letters were written home, fairly bulging with news. Jo started something which interested Sadie and was heartily approved by Nan. This was a diary—or, as Jo preferred to call it, a journal in which she recorded daily the most interesting doings of that day. Jo could write amusingly. Her wit always sparkled more on paper than in speech. The journal that she prepared for that first week was so funny when read aloud to a roomful of girls that she was unanimously acclaimed a "coming literary light."
"We have been harboring a genius in our midst," Gladys Holt declaimed with full dramatic effect. "I'm going to speak to Gerry Middleton about you, and if she doesn't get you a job on thePied Pipershe hasn't as much sense as they give her credit for."
Jo giggled, but looked pleased just the same. Geraldine—familiarly known as Gerry—Middleton was editor-in-chief of the school paper,Pied Piper. Besides holding this exalted position, Gerry was a senior and one of the most popular girls at Laurel Hall.
"I don't believe I could write like this for the public eye—" Jo said modestly.
"The vulgar public," interposed Nan.
"Anyway, this is strictly for private consumption," finished Jo, gayly tapping the journal on the fluffy head of Doris who was sitting directly beneath her on nothing more comfortable than the floor. "I wrote it to cheer up an invalid." She looked over intervening heads until her eye met Nan's. "It's for your Aunt Emma, Nan. I thought she might like it."
"Say, Jo, that's a bully scheme!" Nan was radiant. "It will be the best tonic in the world for her!"
So it happened that the new friends of the chums from Woodford came to hear about Nan's invalid aunt. Being kind-hearted girls, they took a genuine interest in the unfortunate woman. And, knowing of Jo's "journal," they saved up scraps of interesting or funny happenings of the day and brought them to lay in the lap of the "literary light."
Miss Emma wrote back cheerfully and affectionately, and her genuine and enthusiastic appreciation of the journal spurred Jo on to fresh efforts.
Meanwhile, the girl chums were becoming well accustomed to the pleasant routine of classes and recreation at Laurel Hall. On Sundays most of the girls put on their best frocks and went in automobiles to Laurelton and church.
This was both pleasant and sad to Jo, who thought more of her parents' troubles on Sundays than on other days—perhaps because then she had more time to think.
She gathered from her mother's letters—which arrived far more regularly and voluminously than the brief and hastily scrawled missives of her father—that nothing had as yet been heard of Andrew Simmer.
"Your father is striving frantically to save something from the wreck," wrote Mrs. Morley. "If anybody could do it, he will, you may be sure, for his energy and courage are remarkable. He is a father to be proud of, Jo, but I sometimes wonder if his health will bear the strain."
"Your father is striving frantically to save something from the wreck," wrote Mrs. Morley. "If anybody could do it, he will, you may be sure, for his energy and courage are remarkable. He is a father to be proud of, Jo, but I sometimes wonder if his health will bear the strain."
Portions like this from her mother's letters repeated themselves over and over again while Jo attended church. She would be overwhelmed with a great melancholy and accuse herself, illogically enough, for having deserted her parents in their hour of need.
"It is wicked of me to be living here at Laurel Hall, surrounded by all sorts of comforts, luxuries, almost, while they are struggling at home. I'm going home! I'm going home to-morrow!"
But with to-morrow would come a saner mood, Jo realizing that she would only increase the worries of those at home by yielding to her impulse. She could help them more by staying where she was.
The members of the faculty at Laurel Hall were almost all liked by the girls. If there was an exception to this rule it was Miss Tully, the English teacher. It was rumored that Miss Tully was a snob, that she favored Kate Speed and Kate's chum Lottie Sparks because they were by far the richest girls in Laurel Hall.
"Anyway, she listens to everything those girls say when they come running with tales about the others," Doris Maybel said, with a shake of her curly head. "And if you notice, she generally decides in their favor. You just watch out and see if it isn't so!"
It was not long before the girls had an opportunity to test the truth of this statement.
By the end of the first week at Laurel Hall the three chums were well established in classes. They enjoyed their studies and liked their teachers—with that one exception.
Laurel Hall had been built originally by a wealthy Englishman. In this summer home he had copied as closely as possible the architecture of feudal England. Except that it was built of wood instead of stone, Laurel Hall might have been a miniature castle out of a story book.
Having built this ostentatious home for himself, the Englishman was called back to his native country and was forced to sell his property at a sacrifice. Miss Romaine, looking for just such a place at the time, had unhesitatingly closed the deal that was most satisfactory to both parties.
Of course all this had happened years before the three chums were ready for school, but Laurel Hall remained substantially as it was when the sale took place.
One entered a great square hall from which a broad stairway ascended to a gallery above. Numerous rooms opened from this gallery and formed the dormitories of the students. There was a third floor, but only a few rooms were finished off here, and they were mostly occupied by servants. There was a great open attic also, and from this ran tiny fascinating stairways—scarcely more than ladders—ascending into turrets, and tower rooms from which one could gain a view of the countryside.
On the first floor were the classrooms, a large drawing, and a reception room, the dining hall already described and the rooms occupied by members of the faculty. The kitchen, presided over by a Negro cook named Nora, had been built on later and never seemed quite in keeping with the rest of the place. The girls liked it, however, as Nora often slipped them handfuls of fresh cookies out of the side door and never objected to making up picnic lunches whenever they were required. The kitchen was, the students thought, the pleasantest and most homelike place at Laurel Hall.
Now, for the members of the faculty.
Miss Travers, the teacher of mathematics, a slight energetic woman with an intellectual face, was well on in her fifties, yet carried with her a heart that was eternally young and in complete sympathy with the moods and caprices of her young charges.
The girls loved her, and, in lieu of mother just then, came to her with their troubles and problems, always sure of complete understanding and kindly guidance.
While the girls had a great affection for Miss Romaine, who was always pleasant and gracious and rigidly just, they could not approach her as they did Miss Travers, for she seemed to stand aloof from them surrounded by the wall of her reserve.
Then there was absent-minded Miss Ridley, the teacher of history. Except when teaching this subject dear to her heart, Miss Ridley seemed to dwell on a strange and infinitely remote planet all her own. She could never remember names, and the girls soon learned that a culprit coming unprepared to one of Miss Ridley's classes, could, by gazing always demurely at her desk, avoid detection.
For Miss Ridley when she asked a question would invariably point at any one who happened to be looking in her direction and snap out crisply, "Youtell me!"
Those that did not look in Miss Ridley's direction were seldom called upon for recitation, since that lady was loath to admit that she could not remember names.
"Another good way is to get her started talking history," one of these knowing young ones giggled after a particularly absent-minded session with Miss Ridley. "She'll talk the period through and forget at the end of it that she has not called on a single person for recitation!"
Nevertheless, the girls learned history in Miss Ridley's class. Perhaps it was because the teacher herself was so passionately interested in the subject that she got her enthusiasm across to her students. At any rate, her lectures, always started by some innocent, demure-looking girl with a guilty secret up her sleeve, were more informative and created a more lasting impression than any amount of class recitation could have done.
There were the teachers of languages too—Miss Drew whom, the girls declared, thought and prayed in Latin and Greek and dwelt in spirit among the early Hellenes, who never tired of telling the girls about Pelasgic Greece and the marvelous Tyrinthian wall.
"Imagine a wall fifty feet high and thirty feet thick!" interpolated a wide-eyed girl with an irreverent giggle. "Imagine having to scalethatto get out to a party!"
There was the sweet-faced French teacher, a widow by the name of Briais, and Miss Handel, the portly German instructress. The music teacher, Miss Blitz, who wore her hair in a wild bob and was really an exceptional performer on the piano, provided a great deal of innocent amusement for her pupils.
The most youthful of all the members of the faculty at Laurel Hall was Miss Talley, physical culture teacher. She was fresh from college, hardly more than a girl, and she led her pupils through gymnastic performances at a stiff pace that they sometimes found rather hard to match.
They liked her youth and energy, however, and the fact that she encouraged athletics.
It was Miss Talley who watched the girls at tennis and gave them points—she played a smashing game herself. It was Miss Talley who arranged swimming and rowing races among the girls of the different grades and herself was always ready to out-row or out-swim the best of them.
It was on the tennis courts that the girls from Woodford had their first run-in with Kate Speed's crony, the snappy Lottie Sparks.
"I'll say that girl fits her name," Nan had remarked after meeting Lottie on that first Monday of the opening of school. "Lottie Sparks! It ought to be 'Lottie Spitfire.' I bet that girl goes off like a load of dynamite at the slightest provocation."
The words proved prophetic. A few days later the chums were given a sample of Lottie Sparks' temper that they did not very easily forget.
It happened on the tennis courts. For three days there had been a maddening drizzle of rain, making the courts too wet for tennis practice. The lake, too, was uninviting, and Jo and Sadie, eager to try some work at the oars, gave up all thought of boating until the weather should take a turn for the better.
At last on the fourth day the sun came out, feebly, to be sure, but welcomed joyfully by the watching girls.
After lessons they ran pellmell for the gymnasium where their rackets and balls were kept in individual lockers.
"The court will be pretty wet," Nan said, as she drew her racket from its case.
"We may need skid chains," Sadie agreed, with a chuckle. "But who cares? We can bat the ball about a bit, anyway."
The three chums of Woodford were the first to reach the wet and slippery tennis courts.
Sadie was joyfully trying out her rather uncertain service against Nan's smashing backhand when Kate Speed and Lottie Sparks came along, school books in hand.
They stopped to watch the practice, and perhaps it was this unfriendly inspection that flustered Sadie.
At any rate, she sent the ball spinning across the net in a ludicrously wild serve. It bounded from the muddy ground and caught Lottie Sparks squarely on the ear!
"Oh, my goodness!" cried Sadie, in consternation. "Now, what have I done?"