CHAPTER XVI
A MUDDY TENNIS BALL
Nan and Jo ran to join Sadie in an instinctive gesture of defense.
Lottie Sparks staggered beneath the blow—for it was really a pretty hard wallop—but rallied the next moment in admirable style.
She wiped the mud from her ear as several of the other girls, sensing a scene, came running up. A flush of fury spread over Lottie's dark face. She had been made ridiculous. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that some of the girls were trying to hide their amusement at sight of her mud-streaked face. Others were tittering outright.
"Of all the outrageous things!" cried Kate Speed, adding fuel to her crony's wrath. "You might know one of those Woodford girls would try a thing like that!"
"I don't know what you mean, Kate Speed!" cried Jo, stepping forward angrily.
Nan spoke urgently to her more fiery chum.
"Don't make a scene, Jo. Let it go." Then to Sadie, "Tell the girl you're sorry, Sade. We don't want any trouble."
Sadie, who had been too dismayed and conscience-stricken to attempt any explanation now stepped forward, stammering some sort of apology.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean——"
"Oh, you're sorry, are you?" Lottie Sparks caught her up viciously, enraged at the more audible titters of the girls near her. "You didn't mean it, didn't you? Oh, no, of course you didn't! Your kind is always innocent! But don't think you can fool me. You did it on purpose!"
At this totally unjust accusation the usually gentle Sadie became roused to fighting pitch.
"I did not!" she cried, and took another step forward. "Don't dare say such a thing, you——"
The words died in mid-air. A long sigh of consternation rose from the watching girls.
Lottie Sparks, beside herself with rage, took careful aim, and, with all her might, threw one of her school books straight at Sadie's head!
Lucky for Sadie that she saw the missile coming and dodged!
The heavy book whizzed past her ear and came to rest in the muddy ground of the tennis court.
This was too much!
Sadie, with Nan and Jo to back her up, advanced upon her belligerent enemy.
There was a murmur of excitement among the girls. They crowded closer to watch what promised to be a battle royal.
There is no telling what might have come of the argument had not the English teacher appeared at that moment.
"Girls! Girls!" Miss Tully cried in her crisp, precise voice. "Pray, what is the meaning of this? What has happened?"
Kate Speed got in her innings first.
"It was all Sadie Appleby's fault, Miss Tully!" she cried. "She threw a muddy tennis ball at Lottie and hit her in the ear."
"I did not, Miss Tully," cried Sadie hotly. "I never thought of such a thing. It was an accident and I've already told Lottie Sparks I'm sorry."
"She threw it at me, Miss Tully," Lottie insisted. "She did it just to be mean!"
"Oh, she did not! That's a falsehood!" Jo cried out. Miss Tully turned sharply upon her.
"What kind of language is this for a student of Laurel Hall?" she reproved, looking sternly at the open-mouthed Jo. "Miss Josephine Morley, you will do better in the future to set a guard upon your tongue."
Lottie Sparks was beginning to look triumphant. Kate Speed tossed her fair head insolently. "I told you so!" was written plainly over the faces of both of them.
Jo's face burned red with an angry sense of injustice. Nan and Sadie were equally amazed and impotent.
Jo made one last attempt.
"But, Miss Tully——"
"That will do!" Miss Tully's acidulous tone put a definite end to the controversy. "I will set the facts of this disgusting quarrel before Miss Romaine and she will decide upon the sort of punishment to be meted out to the culprit. It is a disgrace to Laurel Hall that such a scene could occur within its grounds."
Her stern gaze traveled over the three chums from Woodford.
"I am here now, Miss Tully," came a clear, calm voice from behind the English teacher. "May I ask what all this trouble is about?"
With relief, Sadie, Jo, and Nan turned toward Miss Romaine as she made her way into the center of the group. Miss Romaine was fair.Shewould not judge without a hearing!
Miss Tully lost some of her assurance at sight of her superior. Lottie and Kate also lost their self-satisfied smiles and began to look anxious.
Questioned by Miss Romaine, the English teacher gave the details of both sides of the quarrel as she had heard them.
"I was about to lay the facts before you and let you decide as you thought fit," Miss Tully finished stiffly.
"Quite right," said Miss Romaine, who was always careful to uphold her teachers before the girls, however she might disagree with them in private. Then she turned gravely to Sadie Appleby.
"Then you say again that this was an accident and that you have already apologized to Lottie?" she asked.
Sadie nodded.
"I certainly do, Miss Jane," she said in all earnestness.
Lottie started forward.
"Miss Jane, she did it just to be mean. She did it on purpose!"
Miss Romaine turned swiftly upon the girl.
"That is ridiculous, Lottie Sparks, and I am ashamed that a girl of mine could make such an accusation. Sadie has said that it was an accident and has apologized. You must accept her apology and forget the incident. I will not hear another word on the subject!"
Miss Romaine turned away, frowning. Thoroughly cowed, but smoldering with resentment, Lottie Sparks stepped back to let her pass.
Miss Tully had already slipped away, and as the chums from Woodford turned back to the tennis courts they saw the English teacher entering the Hall.
Jo could not avoid crowing a little over the vanquished enemy.
She picked up Lottie Sparks' book and, with a twinkle in her eye, handed it to the owner.
"You may need it again some time," she said.
Lottie Sparks snatched at the book.
"Maybe I will," she said, and added vindictively: "Next time I won't miss with it, either!"
This was the first declaration of open warfare between the two camps. But scarcely a day passed after the incident of the tennis courts that either Kate or her friend did not find some excuse for annoying or slighting the chums from Woodford.
The girls could afford to laugh at most of these annoyances. They were popular with the rest of their classmates—with all, that is, who did not comprise Kate Speed's snobbish following—and they were content to give those unpleasant girls a wide berth.
Then one day toward the end of their third week at Laurel Hall, there came more startling news.
Thieves had been at work again the night before, only that this time they had done their task more thoroughly.
About five o'clock in the morning the janitor, who slept in a room over the garage that was used for Miss Romaine's sedan and a Ford truck which carried supplies from the village to the Hall, was awakened by the put-putting of a motor boat on the lake. He saw two men set off in it, apparently leaving the Laurel Hall dock.
With the first robbery in mind and feeling uneasy, the janitor dressed quickly and made the rounds of the gymnasium and the boathouse. Here he found his suspicions justified. The gymnasium and the boathouse had both been robbed again!
The janitor went directly to Miss Romaine with his report. In some way the news leaked out before the Head of Laurel Hall intended it should. Like wildfire it spread among the excited girls.
"The lockers in the gym have been practically cleaned out!" wailed Nan.
"We should have slept with our things under our beds, that's what we should have done!" cried Sadie.
"I don't want to sleep under a bed!" Nan said crossly. "I prefer a mattress."
"I was speaking of the things, silly, not ourselves," retorted Sadie, with withering scorn.
Nan got up and walked restlessly about the room. In the course of her rambles her eye happened to light upon three tennis rackets, carefully cased and standing each in its own place against the wall.
"Anyway, we've some luck," she said, brightening. "We've managed to save our rackets out of the wreck."
"Yes, but how about my gym suit?" said Jo gloomily. "Chances are I'll not get another."
"Cheer up! Maybe some of the stuff will be found," said Sadie optimistically.
"Not with that long-whiskered sheriff down in the village and his short-brained helper on the job," said Nan flippantly. "If they didn't catch the thieves before, there's not much chance of their doing it now. A fine mess we're in, I'll say!"
That afternoon Miss Romaine called a special meeting of all the students of Laurel Hall in the auditorium.
She spoke simply and sincerely of the second robbery, sympathizing with the girls who had lost their property and assuring them that no effort would be spared to apprehend the thieves and recover the stolen articles.
But in spite of these assurances the girls remained uneasy and nervous.
"How do we know that this thief isn't some sort of maniac?" one of them suggested.
"It certainly sounds like the work of a crazy man," another admitted.
This dread supposition spread through the school like fire and for days after the second robbery scarcely a girl could be found who would set foot in the grounds of Laurel Hall after dark.
The local police, represented by the sheriff and his assistant, were being stirred to real effort by the insistence of Miss Romaine and the girls hoped daily that they would receive some word in regard to their stolen property and the identity of the thieves.
Poor Jo was in a worse plight than any of them. She had bought her gymnasium suit with a bill from that pitifully small roll handed to her by her father. She had no money to buy another. She could not bring herself to confess this to Nan or Sadie and she would not confess it to her father, who would probably sacrifice something he needed himself to send her the money.
"No, you will just have to grin and bear it, Jo, old girl," she told herself, and added ruefully: "The hardest part of that is the grin!"
Things were still at this pass when Jessie Robinson burst in upon the chums one night, her dark eyes flashing.
"Girls, I've just heard the most abominable thing!" she cried. "I'm so mad I could bite!"