“And what do you propose doing with all those children?”
“I thought we’d feed them,” said Mabel, “and then find somebody that knows them. There’s a vacant room across from mine. I’ll take care of them for the night. The baby is getting a tooth.”
“A teething baby!”
“And twins!” added Mabel. “And a boy named Tommy. But I got them all here alive and that was something.”
“Of course I shall have to punish you for going out of bounds. But the rest of your—your behavior is so unusual that I don’t know just how to meet it. I’ll have to think about it awhile. Now take those children to the room you mentioned and I’ll have one of the maids send up some supper—”
“Milk and oatmeal and bread,” pleaded Mabel, wearily.
An hour later, the mother of the forsaken children appeared at the kitchen door. She had followed the wheels of the baby carriage all the way to Highland Hall.
Charles was peeling potatoes, the two neat maids were helping him. At sight of the woman in the doorway, Charles rose suddenly to his feet, dropped his pan of potatoes and turned as if to flee. But the visitor rushed across the room and threw her arms about his neck.
And then tall, lanky Charles, with a sheepish glance at the two astonished maids, returned her kiss.
“He’s my husband,” said the woman. “I thought he’d gone to Detroit to get work. And here he is, not three miles from home!”
Charles explained blushingly that he had temporarily deserted his wife because he found it so pleasant to be considered a bachelor.
“The ladies,” said Charles, waving a hand toward the fat cook and the two neat maids “make so much of a single man. And I like being made much of—any man does.”
“And where,” demanded Mrs. Charles, “are my children?”
The neat maid who had carried the milk upstairs was able to lead her to her family; and Mabel learned that Lizzie had sent a note explaining that she couldn’t come; but the messenger had failed to deliver the note. Mrs. Charles had been later than usual in starting her cleaning work on the train and the train had started, carrying her to Chicago.
“And I thought,” said she, “I might as well make the most of a free ride while I was about it; so I went all the way, bought my provisions in town and got the noon train back.”
Charles hitched the school horse to the school wagon. With his sharp elbows sticking out and his sandy hair on end, he perched on the front seat and drove his family home that evening. He remained in the employ of Doctor Rhodes, but the two neat maids no longer “made much of him.” As for the fat cook, she told him exactly what she thought of a man who deserted a good wife and four fine children for the sake of flattering attentions from other ladies. And crestfallen Charles promised to mend his ways.
The girls teased Mabel considerably for the next few days. One afternoon she went to her room and was decidedly startled to find a dozen almost human objects seated on the floor, their backs braced against the wall. They were pillows stuffed into middy blouses. A large placard held forth by two stuffed sleeves read: “We are orphans. Please stay with us until Lizzie comes.”
A night or two afterwards she found her bed occupied by four more almost human middy blouse orphans, and one morning a lovely picture of a very stout young person pushing a wide baby carriage full of plump infants appeared on the assembly room blackboard. Under it was printed “Missing: One Lizzie.”
Mabel suspected that Henrietta and Maude Wilder were at the bottom of these outrages; and her suspicions were probably correct. But there were other offenders. Whenever little Jane Pool met her in the corridor she would cock a wicked black eye at her and say: “Hello, Lizzie,” or “How’s Lizzie today?”
Even one of the lofty seniors condescended to notice her long enough to ask: “Found any more orphans to adopt yet?”
Even tender hearted Bettie could not refrain sometimes from saying: “Anne, Sister Anne, do you see anybody coming?”
Mabel, who was feeling a bit doleful these days, took all this teasing in good part. Indeed, she was glad to be amused. After days of suspense her punishment for going out of bounds had been meted out to her; and she felt that she was indeed being punished. On Wednesday evening there was to be a concert at the Theological Seminary, with ice cream afterwards. Now, the students might and did scramble their prayers and make hash of their sermons; but they could sing, so it was always a joy to hear them. And “Ice cream afterwards” sounded wonderfully good to Mabel. But for Mabel there was to be no music and no ice cream. She was to stay at home with poor old Abbie. It was not until Wednesday afternoon that Mabel learned that Maude also was to stay at home.
“Miss Woodruff did it,” explained Maude, her amber eyes twinkling merrily. “Just after ‘Lights out’ last night I thought I’d like to drop a cold wet washcloth down Dorothy Miller’s neck. It’s a long way over to the North corridor, you know, and the hall doors all squeak; but I thought I could get away with it. Well, what did I do but run slap bang into Miss Woodruff!”
“Goodness!” gasped Mabel. “What did you do?”
“Well,” continued Maude, “I never said a word. I just stared straight ahead with my eyes wide open and pretended I was walking in my sleep, with that silly washcloth dripping from my outstretched hand. And I had her fooled. But just as I reached my own door I just absent-mindedly turned around and stuck my tongue out at her—you know I always do stick my tongue out at her when she isn’t looking—but this time I got caught. Mean old thing! She switched the light on just in time to get full benefit, so it was all up with little Maude.”
“What did she do then?”
“Oh, she said a lot of awfully cutting things. She’s a good teacher and I do respect her for that; but she doesn’t have to be so sarcastic when folks—well, stick out their tongues. I think it’s a mean shame to make me lose that concert and all that ice cream just for a little thing like that. Cora says they sing funny songs and there’s always cake with the ice cream. I’m going to get even with Miss Woodruff, see if I don’t. Well, cheer up, Mabel. I’ll see you later.”
Evening found the two girls with their noses pressed against their bedroom windows watching the long procession of girls and teachers out of sight down the moonlit road. As usual, the Seniors led and the younger girls brought up the rear. Mabel looked at the place beside Marjory that should have been hers and sighed. She thought of that ice cream and a large tear rolled down her cheek.
Maude, wasting no tears, tiptoed to a room on the fourth floor. A key clicked in a lock and in two minutes more, naughty Maude was bouncing gleefully on Mabel’s bed.
“I’ve locked poor old Abbie in her bedroom,” announced Maude. “And now look at this!”
Maude hurled a large scarlet bundle at Mabel’s head. Fortunately, it was a soft bundle.
“Spread it out on the floor,” directed Maude. “It’s Miss Woodruff’s nightgown. Somebody told her that red flannel was a sure cure for rheumatism, so she wears that thing. It’s perfectly enormous—it would have to be or it wouldn’t fit. Now, let’s look in all the Lakeville girls’ sewing baskets for large white buttons and white tape—they won’t mind. We’ll just embellish that nightie with a few nice pictures and tack it up on Miss Woodruff’s door—the girls will love it. We’ll sew those buttons on tight, too.”
Against the brilliant background, the naughty pair outlined grinning faces with the white tape, making eyes and other features with the large white buttons. A blazing sun adorned each wide front and Maude accomplished a daring caricature of Miss Woodruff herself in the very center of the broad scarlet back. Ordinarily, both Maude and Mabel hated to sew on buttons; but now they fell upon the task with glee.
“I’ve thought of something else,” announced Maude, when this task was finished. “Miss Woodruff hates tobacco smoke. There are several packages of horrible cigarettes in Madame Bolande’s room. You get the tin pail that stands on the back porch. After awhile I’ll build a tiny fire in that and burn a bunch of those cigarettes just inside Miss Woodruff’s door.”
“Oh Maude—”
“We’ve been so bad now that we might as well keep on,” said Maude, recklessly. “There’s one thing sure; the next time they punish us they won’t leave us home—they won’t dare. We’ll have to keep Abbie locked in until the very last minute so she won’t undo any of our work. Now I’ll get a pitcher of water so we can keep the fire in our pail from doing any harm; and anyway a little dampness will make that tobacco smell worse.”
Maude and Mabel were in their beds and very sound asleep when the school returned. Miss Woodruff went to the library to find a book before ascending to her room; so most of the West Corridor girls had a fine chance to see the strange and ludicrous object nailed to the poor lady’s door. Such a shout of laughter went up that Mrs. Rhodes hurried to the corridor and Doctor Rhodes, startled at the unusual sound, followed after. Poor Miss Woodruff arrived a moment later to find even Doctor Rhodes convulsed with mirth.
In one of his brief speeches to the school, Doctor Rhodes had once said “Incapatiated” when he meant “Incapacitated.” Perhaps he was remembering the superior manner in which Miss Woodruff had corrected him. At any rate, he now seemed able to enjoy a joke on that rather severe lady.
Maude spent the next day in solitary confinement in the big lonely room at the end of the North Corridor, far away from all her friends. She was to stay there until she apologized. For some reason, Doctor Rhodes failed to connect Mabel with the wicked doings of the previous night; it is possible that Maude had shouldered all the blame; but when the second day dawned, with Maude still obdurate, Mabel, without consulting any of her friends, marched down to Doctor Rhodes’s office.
“Doctor Rhodes,” said she, “I think you ought to know—that is, I think I ought to tell you—that I sewed just as many buttons on that red nightgown as Maude did; and I ought to be punished just as much.”
“Did you take Miss Woodruff’s silver cardcase?”
“Why, no!” returned Mabel, indignantly. “Of course I didn’t.”
“Or Madame’s cigarettes?”
“No.”
“Or five dollars out of Madame’s everyday hat?”
“Oh, no. And Maude didn’t touch the money or the card case. I’m sure of that.”
“What about the cigarettes?”
“She did take those and we both took the buttons and the tape; but nothing else.”
“And you think you ought to be punished?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Perhaps you could suggest a suitable penalty?”
“You might put me in solitary confinement in that room with Maude.”
Doctor Rhodes laughed and Mabel wondered why.
“You’d better look up the meaning of the word ‘Solitary,’” said he. “I fear there are other reasons why your plan wouldn’t work. You and Maude are a pretty lively team. I think,”—with a shrewd glance at Mabel’s plump figure—“that this is a better punishment for you. No dessert for dinner for a whole week.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Mabel, looking as if a week seemed a pretty long time.
“And you must apologize to Miss Woodruff.”
“I don’t mind that,” said Mabel. “I’m always having to apologize to somebody, so I’ve had lots of practice.”
“That’s an honest youngster,” said Doctor Rhodes to himself when the door had closed behind Mabel. “I’m sure she didn’t take either that cardcase or that money. And I don’t believe that naughty Wilder girl did either. Mabel is just a cheerful blunderer and Maude is just frankly willful. They’re both honest. But I’d give something to know who it is that isn’t—with all this smoke there must be some fire.”
After Maude had spent two long days in the North Corridor bedroom, Miss Woodruff thinking it was time for repentance to set in, tapped at the door. Maude, supposing it was Annie or Mary with her supper tray, hopped into the large black walnut wardrobe that stood against the wall and drew the door shut, meaning to spring forth at the right moment and say “Boo!”—but not until the tray was safe on the table.
The room was dimly lighted. Miss Woodruff, thinking that the dark shadow in the corner was Maude, stepped into the room and said, with dignity: “Maude, I am ready to accept your apology.”
This, of course, was rather sudden. The culprit had no apology at her tongue’s end. Still, she had something—irrepressible Maude was never entirely at a loss. She opened the wardrobe door, smiled sweetly at Miss Woodruff and said:
“Nous avons les raisins blancs et noirs mais pas de cerises.”
Apparently Miss Woodruff didn’t care whether there were cherries or not. She went out and slammed the door.
After her third day of solitary confinement, Maude promised to apologize properly to Miss Woodruff the next morning, immediately after prayers.
“Miss Woodruff,” said Maude, standing very slim and straight at her own desk in the Assembly room, “I apologize for the things I did to your—your clothes the other night. I’m sorry it was necessary to do them.”
“That will do,” said Dr. Rhodes, raising his hand, hastily—for there was no knowing how far irrepressible Maude might go, with all those other girls ready to applaud. “I’m sure Miss Woodruff accepts your apology.”
“I do,” replied Miss Woodruff, coldly, “but I should also like to have my silver cardcase returned at once. I have always kept it on the right hand side of my dresser, exactly six inches from my pincushion.”
“Sacré bleu! Quel précision!” breathed untidy Madame Bolande.
“When I went to your closet to get that red—well, that red garment,” replied Maude, “I noticed that the top of your dresser was perfectly neat and tidy. But I didn’t see any cardcase. It might have been there but I didn’t notice it. I certainly didn’t take it.”
“Very well,” said Miss Woodruff. “You may now be seated. Classes please.”
Mabel, the other culprit, was now behaving very well indeed. She was learning her lessons, and, under the patient tuition of Miss Emily Rhodes, was improving her naturally untidy penmanship. She was also meekly, conscientiously and courageously going without dessert; and never—it seemed to always hungry Mabel—had there been so very many entrancing varieties of pie, so many choice puddings; and, of all weeks of the year, that was the one that the fat cook chose for the introduction of a brand new custardy affair that every one of the girls declared “simply scrumptious.”
Usually, there was much swapping of food at meal time. Grace Allen didn’t like butter but Ruth Dennis did; and was glad to give her tapioca pudding to Grace in exchange for Grace’s daily butter. Augusta disliked celery but adored pickles so she and Cora carried on an equally gratifying exchange. Mabel always traded her lima beans for Alice Bailey’s cocoanut pie—Alice hated cocoanut—and of course, during that dessertless week Mabel was obliged to refuse not only her own pie but Alice’s. But everybody liked the new custard.
“Taste mine,” tempted little Jane Pool. “It’s just licking good. Come on, nobody’s looking.”
“No,” sighed Mabel, “it wouldn’t be honest. I said I’d go without so I’ll go all the way—one week can’t last forever.”
“Never mind, Mabel,” comforted Maude, “I’ll ask Nora to make this kind often next week and I’ll give you my share just once so you can catch up. Besides, I owe you that much—I led you into this scrape, you know.”
Going without dessert, however, was a small trouble compared with mysteriously losing two full grown parents. Mabel’s were still missing. As she had no address except Berlin, she wasn’t at all sure that her own letters were reaching them. She and each of the other Lakeville girls had had several brief, boyish letters from their friend and fellow-camper, Laddie Lombard, the shipwrecked boy they had rescued at Pete’s Patch; but from her parents, not a word for so many weeks that it made Mabel shiver to count them.
Her thoughts, nowadays, were gloomy ones. What if she had to stay at Highland Hall until she was faded and forty like poor old Abbie. What if her skirts kept getting shorter and shorter (or what was more likely, narrower and narrower) like Cora’s. What if her middy blouses faded and frayed like Sallie’s, with no prospects of new ones. And what if she never saw her dear parents again—that was the worst thought of all. Her plump easy-going mother, her kind, pleasant father.
Yes, that was the worst thought of all. It weighed Mabel down. No matter what else she might be doing at the moment, Mabel couldn’t quite escape from the steadily increasing weight of that puzzling trouble.
“I’d give all four of my letters from Laddie,” said Mabel, wistfully, “for just a postal card with one little word on it from my mother.”
“Well,” declared Gladys de Milligan, who also was watching the mail bag, expectantly, “if I had a daughter as clumsy as you are I’d chuck her into a boarding school and leave her there forever. I’d be glad to forget about her.”
“Anyhow,” declared Mabel, crossly, “you don’t need to chew gum in my ear, even if you would be that kind of a mother.”
The Lakeville girls tried to cheer troubled Mabel but she could see that they, too, were becoming anxious. Indeed, Bettie had secretly written to Mr. Black about it. Mr. Black, Bettie firmly believed, could fix anything.
“My goodness!” said Cora, one evening, when the girls were waiting for Henrietta to come and tell them ghost stories on the spooky front stairs, “here are the Christmas holidays coming right along and I don’t know what I’m ever going to do. I’ve written and written to my people about the way I’m growing—told ’em I was seven feet tall if I was an inch—and they won’t believe me. They think I’m exaggerating! Here I am, growing a mile a minute; but my clothes, alas! are standing still. I’m going home with Maude, to visit her perfectly scrumptious family, and I haven’t one single dud that’s big enough either lengthwise or sidewise.”
“Didn’t the photographs work?” asked Helen Miller. For the Miller girls, at Cora’s request, had taken a number of snapshots of the growing girl to be sent to her doubting parents. Perhaps Cora had grown a little at the very moment in which she was snapped. At any rate the pictures were slightly hazy as to outline; yet, to the girls, they looked convincingly like Cora.
“No,” returned Cora, mournfully. “They didn’t believe that it was a picture of me.”
“What are you going to try next?” asked little Jane Pool.
“Nothing. I’ve given up. I’ve half a mind to stay right here for the holidays.”
“Nonsense!” said Maude. “You can wear my clothes—I’ve several things that are too big for me—that new navy blue taffeta, for instance.”
“I couldn’t do that,” said Cora, blushing until her freckles disappeared. “Your people would know they were yours. I’d feel ashamed.”
“Yes, that wouldn’t do,” agreed Jean.
“I know what to do,” said Henrietta, who had arrived and was perched on the substantial newel post. “We’ll all lend you things. You can take that new white blouse of mine—it will have to shrink before I can wear it.”
“I’ll lend you my pleated skirt,” said Helen Miller, “you have it most of the time, anyway.”
“I have a petticoat that would go with it,” said Dorothy.
“Please—please take my new umbrella,” pleaded little Jane Pool, earnestly. “I want to lend you something and that’s the only thing I have that’s big enough.”
“You’re a bunch of darlings,” said Cora, hugging them all by turns, “and I’ll be glad to borrow your things.”
“Of course it’s too late to be of any use for vacation,” said Jean, “but I have an idea. Why don’t you ask Doctor Rhodes to write to your people and tell them the horrible truth about your inches. Have Mrs. Henry Rhodes measure you. Figures, you know, never—well, exaggerate. They may believe Doctor Rhodes.”
“Angel child!” cried Cora, “I’ll do just that. You’ve found the answer.”
Perhaps Jean had, for Doctor Rhodes, both amused and impressed by Cora’s remarkable plight, did write to her people and the response was a large box that arrived soon after Cora returned from Maude’s.
“And my goodness!” said exaggerating Cora, “there are tucks a mile wide and hems a mile deep and a whole acre of cloth in everything.”
Three days after the evening on the stairs, the girls were all in the school room when Sallie, a little late, came in with the mail bag. There was a pleasing plumpness about the bag that day; and, as usual, all the girls crowded into the space just below the rostrum, so that Sallie, the post girl, looked down upon a small sea of eager, upturned faces.
Sallie reached into the bag, as was her habit, and pulled out a letter.
“Miss Eleanor Pratt,” she read. One of the Seniors accepted it, calmly.
“Miss Anne Blodgett, Miss Isabelle Carew, Miss Ruth Dennis, Miss Debbie Clark, Miss Hazel Benton, Miss Gladys de Milligan, Miss Bettie Tucker, Miss Augusta Lemon, Miss Beatrice Holmes—” Another Senior strolled leisurely forward and condescended to accept a letter. Really, those older girls were annoying; they were so blasé about their mail.
“Miss Mabel Bennett,” called Sallie, in her clear, strong voice.
Mabel seized her letter and waved it, gleefully. “It’s from Mother!” she cried. “Hip, Hip, Hooray!” (There was nothing blasé about Mabel.)
Sallie, beaming sympathetically, pulled another letter from the bag.
“Miss Mabel Bennett,” she announced.
“It’s from Mother,” Mabel shrieked again.
But when the third letter proved to be Mabel’s, too, Mabel was too breathless with excitement to do more than gasp. When she had received five letters and four postal cards and a package containing thick, remarkably substantial German handkerchiefs, one for herself and one for each of her Lakeville friends, it was almost a relief to hear Sallie read a different name; for even the lofty Seniors were staring at her in astonishment.
“It wasn’t my people that were lost,” explained Mabel, after she had read all this accumulation of mail. “For quite a long time Mother mailed her letters in an old post-box that wasn’t used any more for that purpose. She didn’t understand enough German when somebody told her that wasn’t the right one. But Father found out about it; and, after a long time, they succeeded in getting the German postmaster to open the old box and send her letters. So I’m not an orphan after all. And this week I’m going to buy something lovely with every penny of my thirty cents for Sallie, because she is.”
Shortly before Christmas, Jean’s father, Mr. Mapes, turned up just in time to whisk the Lakeville youngsters aboard their train. The girls were so glad to see a friend from home that they all but wept tears of joy. Quiet Mr. Mapes was quite pleased and embarrassed at their rapturous greeting—even Henrietta having surprised him with a kiss.
“We’d be glad to see even a beggar from home,” explained Mabel earnestly and with her usual frankness—and wondered why Mr. Mapes laughed.
Mabel was to visit among her friends for the holidays. All the other Highland Hall girls except homeless Sallie, Virginia Mason (a quiet girl from far away Oregon) and poor old Abbie, who wasn’t exactly a girl, departed to their homes for a two weeks’ vacation.
It wouldn’t be possible to describe all the Christmas gifts that the happy Lakeville girls received; but some of the more unusual ones deserve mention. From Germany, Mrs. Bennett sent to each of the five girls a lovely little Dresden pin of exquisite enamel. Mrs. Lombard, the grateful mother of Laddie, the rescued castaway, presented to each a beautiful gold locket containing a pleasing picture of her attractive boy. Mrs. Slater had selected an interesting book for each of Henrietta’s chums; and from Mr. Black, each girl received a beautiful leather writing case “with a place for stamps and everything,” as Bettie said joyfully. Mrs. Crane gave each girl a five dollar gold piece. But Henrietta’s father had sent nothing to his family. This was both puzzling and alarming. He had never before failed to send wonderful gifts at Christmas time.
Of course the Lakeville girls had dispatched parcels to Sallie and had written to her; so for once the post-girl had been able to deliver much pleasant mail to herself.
There was only one trouble with that vacation. It didn’t last long enough.
“Dear me!” said Henrietta, when Mr. Black had returned them all safely to Highland Hall, “those were the shortest two weeks that ever happened.”
This second coming to Highland Hall, however, was quite different from the first; and much pleasanter. The early arrivals greeted the late comers warmly and there was much hugging and kissing in the corridors. With one exception, all the girls and all the teachers had returned. The exception was Madame Bolande.
“I’m pretty sure she was fired,” confided Sallie, inelegantly. “She was in a furious temper when she packed her trunk the day after you left. And I wish you could have seen her room afterwards. Dust and powder and rouge all over the place—I had to help Abbie clean up. She wore her stockings until the feet were gone and then threw them under the bed.”
“I knew she was too awful to last,” said Hazel Benton. “But I did think they’d be obliged to keep her for a whole year. I’m so glad they didn’t.”
At first there was no regular French teacher. Elisabeth Wilson, one of the Seniors, attempted to carry on the classes; but found it difficult to undo Madame’s faulty work. Then one of the Theological students was engaged temporarily; but so many extra girls among the day pupils decided suddenly to take French that the young Theologian fell ill from overwork. Then Henrietta offered to tide the classes over until Doctor Rhodes should hear from the agency that was to supply the new teacher.
The three Seniors were regarded by the rest of the pupils with considerable awe, and it is time that you were hearing more about them. In the first place they were quite old—sixteen or perhaps as much as seventeen; but as Seniors sometimes do, they kept their ages a dark secret. The other girls were permitted to spend only thirty cents a week for candy and other eatables. Not so the Seniors. They could spend all the money they liked, provided their parents supplied it, and they did. They could even send to Chicago for large boxes of candy or cream puffs or Angel’s food cake and eat these delectable things at any hour of the day or night, without interference. In the matter of clothes they were not restricted to middies. They could wear what they liked and they did, Eleanor Pratt was exceedingly dressy. Elisabeth Wilson was a walking fashion plate and Beatrice Holmes of Indiana, managed to out-dress them both. Occasionally, one or another of these superior young persons would condescend to pass her box of chocolates to some of the younger girls; but, for the most part, the proud and lofty Seniors, as Sallie said, flocked by themselves and were not always polite when some thoughtless young person from the lower forms “butted in.”
Their rooms were in the older part of the house and were much grander than those of the other pupils. It meant a great deal to be a Senior—you always spelled it with a very large S—at Highland Hall.
But being a Senior did not exempt Miss Pratt, Miss Wilson or Miss Holmes—never did any other pupil venture to address them as Eleanor, Elisabeth or Beatrice—from losing certain, small belongings.
Two weeks after the holidays, Miss Wilson reported the loss of a small crescent pin, set with diamonds. Miss Holmes had searched her room in vain for a valuable bracelet and Miss Pratt had broken a ten dollar bill in order to buy a quarter’s worth of stamps—and the change had vanished from her purse. Yes, she had been careless to leave it in the pocket of her coat in the cloak room; but that was no reason why any one should have taken it.
“Anyway,” said Sallie, “we know now that it isn’t Madame Bolande who is doing it; and that’s something.”
“Of course,” ventured Henrietta, “it couldn’t be one of the Rhodes family. I know there is some sort of a mystery about them. They all have sort of a queer, shifty look about them; and they all shut right up like clams when you ask questions. You can’t even pry into poor old Miss Emily’s past without frightening her. This is an old school; but except for Miss Julia I can’t believe that the Rhodes people have been here very long. Now have they, Sallie?”
“I can’t tell you a thing,” declared Sallie. “I promised not to and I can’t. There is a sort of secret. It isn’t anything very bad. It’s just something that Doctor Rhodes thinks might make a difference in the attendance if it were known—Goodness! I’ve told you more now than I meant to. Please don’t talk about it, Henrietta.”
“Of course I won’t,” promised Henrietta, “but I’m just as curious as I can be and I’m going to pump poor old Abbie.”
But poor old Abbie showed unexpected strength of mind; she put her fingers into her ears and refused to listen to Henrietta’s blandishments.
“It ain’t for me,” said Abbie, “livin’ here like I be, to be givin’ things away to prying young persons like you and that Jane Pool child that’s always pesterin’ me about my past. I know what I know but you ain’t goin’ to. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”
Every week, some time between three and five o’clock on Saturday afternoon, every pupil, not excepting even the lofty Seniors, was expected to visit the huge attic above the older portion of Highland Hall. Here, arranged in a neat border all around the big room, were the girls’ trunks. Only on Saturdays were the girls permitted to visit them—it seemed, Bettie said, almost like getting back home to see them again each week.
Near the windows were benches and numerous brushes and boxes of blacking. It was here that the girls blacked their shoes, or whitened them, according to their needs. Saturday, likewise, was the day for that.
The third Saturday after Christmas, Mabel, always a little awkward, lost her balance and fell backward into an open trunk. In her efforts to save herself she clutched things as she crashed through the flimsy tray. She came up with a ribbon belt in her hand. There was an odd buckle on the belt. Mabel looked at it curiously. Bettie, polishing one of her best black shoes glanced at it too. Then she looked at Mabel and lifted an inquiring eyebrow. Then both girls stooped to look at the name on the trunk. It was there in plain letters, “Gladys E. De Milligan.”
And then Gladys herself appeared suddenly at the top of the stairs with a second armful of clothing to store in her trunk. She flew at surprised Mabel like a small whirlwind and snatched the belt from her hand.
“What do you mean,” she stormed, “prying in my trunk! And taking my things. I caught you doing it—I’ll tell all the girls.”
“I didn’t pry in your trunk,” protested Mabel. “I just fell in. Goodness knows I didn’t want to skin my shoulder on your old trunk; and that belt is just what I got when I grabbed.”
“That’s the truth,” added Bettie.
Gladys locked her trunk ostentatiously, pocketed the key and marched downstairs. Mabel looked at Bettie, Bettie looked at Mabel.
“The buckle on that belt looks a lot like the one that Helen Miller made such a fuss about last fall,” said Mabel.
“I know it does.”
“Do you think we’d better say anything about it to the girls?”
“Let’s ask Jean.”
Now Jean was the kindest soul imaginable. Although she had known many things to Gladys’s disadvantage, she had kept silence herself and had influenced her little friends to keep silence likewise.
“Gladys may have found that buckle,” said Jean, “and of course it’s possible that she and Helen had buckles just alike. I don’t like Laura—I mean Gladys—but I don’t believe we’d better say anything against her to the other girls.”
“She says things against us,” said Mabel. “She told Sallie that my father was just a corn doctor and that all Bettie’s clothes came out of missionary boxes and that Marjory’s Aunty Jane took in washing—and I shan’t tell you what she said about your folks but it was just awful.”
“Well, let’s not worry about it. The girls that we like best aren’t going back on us for anything Gladys can tell them and we don’t have to be mean just because she is.”
“I suppose it is hard luck,” said Bettie, “to be born the kind of person Laura is. I agree with Jean. Let’s forget her and think of pleasant things.”
Laura was a clever girl in many ways. Naturally bright, she learned easily. Naturally rather a forward child, not easily embarrassed, she recited readily—in spite of her gum—and acquired good marks. She broke very few rules. Even that rule that every boarding school girl breaks—the one about remaining in one’s own bed from the time the bell rings for “Lights Out” until it rings again for rising, even that rule was seemingly unbroken by Laura. At any rate, no one ever caught her breaking it. She was rooming now with Victoria Webster in the North Corridor, Victoria having returned thither after the burglar scare was over.
Mrs. Henry Rhodes was matron of the North Corridor, where the Miller girls, Ruth Dennis, Alice Bailey, Hazel Benton, quiet Virginia Mason and some of the older girls roomed. Mrs. Henry, as the girls called her, was easily the most attractive member of the Rhodes family. Quite a young woman, she was both pretty and stylish in a quiet, very pleasing way. Her abundant light brown hair was coiled neatly and becomingly about her small head—she was slender—and not very tall—and Hazel Benton said that she had an aristocratic nose. Most of the girls liked and admired her.
She was not particularly severe or exacting in her duties as matron—Miss Cassandra Woodruff was made of much sterner stuff, as the West Corridor girls knew to their sorrow. Mrs. Henry had once been a boarding school girl herself, likewise a college girl, and her sympathies were with her charges. It was suspected that she didn’t consider it a crime for Dorothy Miller to slip across the hall into Ruth Dennis’s bed to giggle over some joke, or for Hazel Benton to slide into Alice Bailey’s room for a cough drop, or even for half a dozen of the girls to assemble in Dora Burl’s room for a smuggled in, midnight spread of cream puffs; so it is possible that Mrs. Henry didn’t listen, very hard when her charges prowled about at night.
In addition to being a popular matron, she had proved an excellent drawing teacher. Also her needlework classes were turning out good work. She had been married only a short time when her husband died; and, as Cora put it, looked more like a young lady than a widow.
“I wish,” groaned Maude, the day after Miss Woodruff had caught her after “Lights Out” on her way to Cora’s room with a large box of cream puffs under her arm, “that we could swap matrons with the North Corridor. Mrs. Henry knows that cream puffs have to be eaten fresh.”
“Yes,” agreed Cora, “it was certainly a crime about those cream puffs. Four dozen of them at sixty cents, besides what we gave Charles for smuggling them in. Eight of us chipped in with our whole week’s allowance. And what did old Woodsy do but keep them in her warm room all night, and then, after every last one of them had soured beyond hope, she ordered them served for the whole school for lunch.”
Twice a week, from half past seven to nine, there was dancing in the dining room. The tables were pushed back and the floor waxed. Sallie Dickinson had to help with that, so, though she loved to dance, she was usually too tired to do it. Miss Julia Rhodes and the three Seniors took turns at the piano. Miss Julia played “The Blue Danube,” and other sentimental waltzes left over from her own rather remote girlhood. The Seniors were much more modern. They played Sousa’s rousing marches with so much vigor that even Mabel, who had never really learned to dance, felt simply compelled to get up and two-step. And when two of the Seniors, at separate pianos, pounded out “The Washington Post,” stout Miss Woodruff, who had been brought up to believe that it was wicked to dance, kept time so vigorously with her feet that (in spite of her hectic nightwear) she always suffered next day from rheumatism in her plump ankles.
Mabel’s sense of rhythm was good and, for a heavy child, she proved surprisingly light on her feet. At the same time she was clumsy and was continually bumping into other dancers or getting in their way and being bumped. Jean and Bettie danced only moderately well. Inexperienced Jean was a trifle stiff as to knees and elbows and Bettie was not stiff enough. Marjory was like a bit of thistledown, here, there and everywhere, so that Jane Pool and little Lillian Thwaite were the only persons sufficiently nimble to keep step with her.
Henrietta danced very well indeed. She had had several terms of dancing lessons and was, besides, naturally graceful. As a partner, Henrietta was in great demand. In the early months of the school year, all five of the Lakeville girls had been fairly popular, but now, since soon after the Christmas holidays, something was wrong. Except for the girls from her own town, no one but Sallie, Maude Wilder and Jane Pool asked Marjory to dance. Little Lillian Thwaite had even gone so far as to refuse Marjory’s invitations.
“I’m engaged for all the dances,” fibbed Lillian, glibly.
Marjory might have believed her if she had not later heard Lillian asking Gladys for the next two-step. For some reason Marjory was becoming more and more unpopular and the little girl was quite troubled about it. Any little girl would have been.
Gladys danced almost as well as Henrietta did; but Henrietta was the pleasanter dancer to look at. She carried herself prettily, her clothes seemed always just exactly right and Henrietta herself, with her sparkling eyes, her vivid coloring, her dark, becoming curls, was always an attractive sight. Gladys was invariably overdressed for these occasions. Her hair was over-done and her complexion entirely unnatural. She arched her back in an artificial way, crooked her elbows at curious angles and managed to stick her left little finger out in a most peculiar and quite ridiculous manner. Added to this, she invariably chewed gum quite as industriously as she danced.
“It wouldn’t be so bad,” commented Mrs. Henry Rhodes, viewing this spectacle with amusement, “if Gladys chewed in time to the music; but she doesn’t.”
Even the frozen countenance of the older Mrs. Rhodes thawed into something like a smile when Gladys danced and chewed. Still, apparently many of the girls liked to dance with Gladys; but those who did held aloof from the four Lakeville girls and more particularly from Marjory and Mabel.
“I know what I think,” said Marjory, confiding in Mabel one evening when they were the only girls who had not been asked by some one else to waltz. “Laura Milligan has been saying things about us again, and more and more of the girls are believing what she says. It gets a little worse every dancing night. It’s terrible to be unpopular.”
“I know it,” agreed Mabel. “The only friends we have in this school now are the girls that won’t associate with Laura. Maude just hates her and so does Sallie. Jane Pool does, too. And I don’t think Victoria Webster likes her any too well, even if she does room with her.”
“The Seniors make fun of her,” said Marjory; “I’ve seen them do it. Miss Wilson imitates the way she chews gum and Miss Pratt sticks her little finger out the way Laura does. If Augusta wasn’t just a silly goose herself she’d never waste a minute on Laura. And the Miller girls and Isabelle haven’t as many brains in their three heads as little Jane Pool has in her one—I heard Miss Woodruff tell them that in school yesterday. And Grace Allen hasn’t any mind of her own at all. She just thinks what Laura wants her to think, and then passes it on.”
“The friends we have are nice girls,” returned Mabel. “Maude, Cora, Sallie and the others. Just the same it makes me just mad to be snubbed and cold shouldered and left out by anybody.”
“Me too,” said Marjory. “I know you can’t waltz, but let’s get up and do it anyway. We don’t need to look like wallflowers even if we are.”
There was another evidence of Marjory’s growing unpopularity. Once in two weeks there was a general spell down in the Assembly room. Some of the girls loved it, some of them hated it, according to their ability to spell; but they all quivered with excitement while it was going on.
Two of the Seniors marched importantly to the far corners of the room from which point, turn and turn about, they chose sides; and of course it was considered an honor to be among the first called—and a disgrace to be among the last.
Jean and Marjory spelled very well indeed and were usually among the first to be chosen. Mabel spelled just about as badly as anybody could and was always the last. She expected to be. She had grown accustomed to her place at the end of the line and felt as if it belonged to her. Bettie, Grace Allen, Augusta Lemon and Cora were easily downed; but sometimes survived the first word. Isabelle Carew could spell if she kept her mind on it, but once Miss Woodruff had given her the word “Claritude,” and she had gone to dreaming in the middle of it. She spelled it “Clar_ence_.” Of course, after that, everybody knew that Isabelle could not be considered a dependable speller.
But Marjory was. Her ears were keen and she liked to spell. It was a difficult matter to spell her down. Sometimes both Seniors, in their eagerness to get her, called her name in the same breath and then squabbled just like ordinary girls over which should have her. But now, for some undiscoverable reason, Marjory was being left with Mabel until the very last moment—until every other possible girl had been chosen. And this dreadful thing had happened twice.
The first time this happened, Marjory was so disconcerted that she almost forgot how to spell the very easy word that fell to her lot. The second time she was glad to hide behind tall Isabelle, who stood beside her; for there was a large lump in her throat, tears in her gray eyes and a tell-tale pink flush dyeing her small fair face from brow to chin.
Truly it was a terrible thing to be an unpopular person. Marjory wished she could sink through the floor, even if she landed, as she thought she might, in the laundry tubs beneath.
It was a dark afternoon outside and in. Sallie and the Lakeville girls were darning stockings in Henrietta’s room and the light was really too poor for so gloomy an occupation. They were glad when Maude dropped in, swept the stockings from the table and seated herself thereon. A few moments later Cora and little Jane Pool strolled in, followed shortly by Debbie Clark.
“Come on in, girls,” said Maude. “‘Nous avons les raisins blancs et noirs mais pas de cerises.’ In other words, there are no chairs but help yourselves to the floor. You’re just in time. Here’s Mabel cross as two sticks, Marjory terribly doleful for some unknown reason and Henrietta sulking every day at mail time and for hours afterwards. Such a grouchy bunch! What shall I do to cheer you up?”
“It is rather dark just now,” admitted Jean, “but you know we’re all going to the ice cream festival in the basement of the Baptist church tonight. That ought to cheer most anybody.”
“Except Augusta Lemon,” said Cora.
“Why?” asked Henrietta. “Because we have to go early and get away from there before the Theologs arrive on the scene at eight thirty?”
“No, but she’s torn a great jagged hole in the front of her best dress and spilled ink on her second best frock. Since she’s been going with Gladys, she feels as if she had to be dressy.”
“We ought to help her out,” said kind-hearted Jean.
“So we ought,” said Maude, a wicked light beginning to dance in her golden brown eyes. “I have a beautiful idea. I think we ought to help her out a whole lot.”
“How?” asked Marjory.
“Well, you know what a goose she is—how easy it is to make her do what you want her to do—”
“Yes,” said Cora, “she hasn’t any backbone.”
“Not a particle,” agreed Sallie.
“Well, then, I’ll persuade her to let me dress her up for tonight. Let’s borrow the very gayest things we can find. Let’s see how far we can go. Let’s make her look perfectly awful.”
“Oh, no,” pleaded Jean.
“Now be good, Jean, and don’t spoil our fun,” begged Maude. “We just want to cheer these gloomy children up. I know Augusta will be a cheerful sight when we get her all dolled up.”
“I’ll do her hair,” laughed Cora. “I’ll curl it.”
“You couldn’t,” declared Marjory. “It’s the straightest hair that ever grew.”
“I’ll try, anyway. But where are the gay clothes coming from?”
“There’s that fearful sport skirt of Hazel Benton’s,” suggested Sallie. “The one with the very wide green and white stripes. You might borrow that, Maude.”
“And my bright pink sweater,” offered Debbie Clark.
“Dorothy Miller has a pair of awfully pink silk stockings,” said little Jane Pool. “And Augusta herself has a pair of those silly high heeled pumps like Gladys’s. Wouldn’t it be fun to put pink bows on them!”
“Ruth Dennis has some on her lamp shade,” offered Sallie. “And her curtains are tied back with pink ribbons. They’d do for her hair.”
“Good,” laughed Maude. “Now there ought to be a blouse—who has the gayest one?”
“Isabelle has,” said Mabel. “That robin’s egg blue one.”
“Good,” said Maude. “Now I’ll go and gather in all those duds and dump them in here. And then Cora and I will call on Augusta. After we get her talked over, you can help dress her, Henrietta. The rest of you giggle too easily—you’d give the show away. But you can peek in one at a time through the transom if you’re very careful.”
“I can provide a gorgeous string of bright red beads,” offered Henrietta. “And I know where I can get a pair of earrings. She’ll be a perfect scream.”
Augusta was not at all a pretty girl. She had a large, rather stupid face (Henrietta said she looked like a sheep) a meager amount of very stiff and very straight taffy colored hair, her complexion was pale and pasty and her figure was bad; mostly because she was not careful to stand nicely. She proved as easily led as Maude had predicted. She accepted the girls’ offer of assistance with alacrity.
“You’d be lovely with curls,” persuaded Cora, wickedly. “I happen to have a curling iron and an alcohol lamp in my pocket right now. I was just carrying them around—well, just carrying them around, you know. Matches too. Well now, we’ll just light up the little lamp—like that—and we’ll try a little curl—like this. Sit still so I won’t burn your ears—they stick out a good deal so I have to be careful. Here’s Henrietta—she’ll tell us a lovely story while I curl. You’re going to be so beautiful that nobody will know which is you and which is the ice cream.”
“Here’s this adorable skirt,” said Maude, returning with a gay armful of garments. “But you ought to have a bath.”
“I had one last night,” said Augusta.
“Then I’ll dress your feet,” said Henrietta, grabbing the pink silk stockings and flopping down on the floor.
“But they’re pink,” objected Augusta,
“They are Dorothy Miller’s very newest ones,” persuaded Maude, not disclosing the fact that a color-blind aunt had given them to Dorothy for Christmas. “She got them because—because her aunt read in ‘The Well Dressed Woman’ that pink silk stockings should always be worn to ice cream festivals.”
“Did she really?” demanded round-eyed Augusta.
“Pink and green,” declared Maude, hastily holding up the starched skirt to hide her own smiling countenance, “are complementary colors, Mrs. Henry says. You wear them together. The pink brings out the green and the green brings out the pink. And robin’s egg blue—that’s your soul color, Augusta.”
“It doesn’t match the skirt,” objected Augusta.
“It matches your eyes,” said Maude. “Oh, Henrietta! Her feet are beautiful! Yes, I like the bows on her pumps.”
“Ouch!” gasped Augusta, “you did burn my ear.”
“I’ll be more careful,” promised Cora, whose shoulders were shaking. “Just two more lovely curls and I’ll be done—you never saw such adorable curls. Much nicer than Gladys’s.”
“Now the pink sweater,” said Henrietta.
Suddenly there was a crash outside the door, a sound of giggling and of swift scurrying. It was Mabel’s turn at the transom; and the chair had tipped over. Her friends hustled her across the hall along with the chair and examined them both. There were bruises but nothing broken.
“What was that?” gasped Augusta. “Something hit my door.”
“Nothing there,” said Cora, peering into the hall. “The corridor’s perfectly empty. It was probably Miss Woodruff rising from her nap.”
“Wouldn’t it be better,” suggested Maude, thoughtfully eying gorgeous Augusta, “if she were to wear her everyday dress over these things when she goes down to dinner!”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Henrietta. “I’ll tell you what, Augusta. Let’s keep this a lovely surprise for the girls tonight. Not the curls. We’ll just slick those down a bit with a wide black ribbon. But we’ll pull some black stockings over the pink ones and cover your skirt and blouse. The first minute after dinner we’ll rush right up and peel you and put on the pink bows and beads and things. This is just sort of a dress rehearsal.”
“The Highland Hall girls simply won’t know you when they see you at the festival,” assured Maude, when Augusta had agreed to keep the secret until her arrival at the church parlors. Poor Augusta was not accustomed to so much attention from Maude, Henrietta and Cora, all of whom she had admired from a distance, and it pleased her. And, in their hilarious state over the success of their joke, the three naughty girls failed to realize that in making a laughing stock of poor silly Augusta they were not playing fair.
It is true that they suffered a few twinges during dinner time when pleased Augusta beamed at them with a new friendliness and insisted on dividing her dessert among them; but when the proper time came, they peeled her remorselessly, bedecked her with the ridiculous pink bows and smuggled her into the procession without giving the secret away.
The girls not in the secret were surprised; but after all, it was the plotters themselves who were the most completely astonished.
Augusta in all her pinkness—not to mention her blueness and greenness—was a conspicuous object; she was visible from any place in the big room. Now, the Theological students were not to arrive until much later; but the younger boys from Hiltonburg were there in full force. There was an expectant flutter among the Highland Hall girls. On a similar occasion, introduced by some of the day pupils, these same boys had treated several of them to ice cream. Perhaps they’d do it now. Extra ice cream would be very welcome for they had all spent their weekly pocket money and Doctor Rhodes felt that he was sufficiently generous when he provided one helping apiece for his large flock.
But now, with one accord, all the boys at the festival, attracted by Augusta’s brilliant attire and not yet of an age to be critical, were seized with a yearning to treat gorgeous Augusta to ice cream. They begged to be introduced. They begged to be allowed to offer Augusta ice cream and yet more ice cream. And cake and yet more cake.
The wondering girls, staring at blushing Augusta, were amazed to see that she was actually pretty, in spite of her outrageous clothes, for her curled hair fell tenderly and becomingly about her glowing face, her eyes were like stars and she fairly radiated happiness as she ate dish after dish of ice cream. There seemed to be no limit to her capacity.
“And here we are,” breathed Henrietta, “sitting in a long row like so many sheep—”
“And only one dish apiece,” groaned Maude. “Next time I’ll pin all the pink bows on myself.”