Very soon after this surprising occasion, there was another social event and another surprise for our young friends; but not a pleasant surprise for anybody. A disgraceful thing happened. Miss Julia Rhodes’s music pupils gave a public concert in the Assembly room. It was not the concert that was disgraceful; though, owing to the embarrassment of most of the performers, the music was bad enough; and Hazel and Cora felt that they had completely wrecked the occasion when, in stooping to draw out the bench on which they were to sit while playing their duet, they unexpectedly bumped heads, much to the amusement of the audience and to the detriment of their duet.
No, bad as it was, it wasn’t the concert but what happened while it was going on, that publicly disgraced Highland Hall. A number of the village people were invited to the concert and the day pupils, of whom there were perhaps a score, had been asked to bring their parents and friends.
All these guests had hung their wraps in the lower hall, where ordinarily the day pupils hung theirs. Several of the women had carelessly left their purses in their pockets. When they attempted to pay their carfare on the way home, not one of them had a single penny. Some pilfering person had taken every scrap of cash from every purse, and in some cases even the purses were missing.
The principal losers wrote indignant notes to Doctor Rhodes, who naturally was anything but pleased.
Right after prayers the next morning, Doctor Rhodes called the school to order. His face was sterner than usual and his voice was unusually harsh. He told the girls what had occurred, and what a disgrace it was to any school to have such very unpleasant things happen to its trusting guests.
“Moreover,” said he, “many losses of jewelry and money by the pupils in our own dormitories have been reported to me from time to time; and, while it would have been possible, night before last, for a thief to have slipped into that lower hall from outside, I have a feeling that there is some one right in our own school who isn’t—well, to put it plainly—quite as honest as she might be. I don’t like to say this or to think it. I am sorry for the necessity.
“It has been suggested that the person taking these various things might save herself trouble if she were to leave them on the table in the library some time during the day. That room is never occupied during school hours; so the repentant thief would be entirely safe from observation. I am giving some one a very good chance to get out of an unpleasant predicament. I hope she will take advantage of it and mend her ways from this time forward.”
Of course after that, even a very stupid person could have guessed the topic of conversation wherever little groups of girls gathered together. Oh, how their tongues did wag! Oh, how they whispered and nodded their heads! And oh, how many more young persons had lost things that they hadn’t hitherto mentioned. Of course they wondered all day long what was happening in the library. But the day passed and the library table was still empty. Nothing had been returned.
Jean and Bettie were dressing for dinner the next night when Sallie, in a most unusual state of excitement, burst into their room, and flung herself upon Jean’s bed.
“I’m—I’m so mad I could scream,” sobbed Sallie, thumping the pillow with her clenched fist and lashing the air with her feet. “I could kill all that Rhodes family. I—I—I—”
But now Sallie’s words were drowned in sobs.
“Goodness, Sallie, don’t cry so,” said Jean. “You’re in an awful state.”
“Who wouldn’t be in an awful state if—if—” More sobs.
“There, there,” comforted Jean, patting the heaving shoulders. “Get a glass of water for her, Bettie. That’s right. Now take a little drink, Sallie.”
“If—if it were anybody but you,” said Sallie, suddenly jerking herself upright, “I’d throw that water straight in your face! I’m so mad!”
But Sallie clawed the wet hair from her own face, drank the water and handed the glass to Bettie.
“There, now,” said she. “I guess I can talk. You know where I room up on the top floor with Abbie? Well, you know and everybody else knows that Abbie has no money; and that I have just about as much as Abbie has which is just none at all. We are the only people in this school who have no spending money. The other Doctor Rhodes used to give—”
“The other Doctor Rhodes,” gasped Bettie.
“I didn’t mean to say that,” returned Sallie, quickly. “What I mean is just this. I have no money and everybody knows it. Very well, then. I’m the very person that would steal money. And jewelry. I—or poor old Abbie.”
“But you wouldn’t,” soothed Jean.
“But—but some folks think I would. Now, a real paying pupil would get mad and go home if Mrs. Rhodes searched her bureau drawers, wouldn’t she?”
“I should say so,” agreed Jean.
“Well, Mrs. Rhodes and Mrs. Henry Rhodes searched mine and Abbie’s.”
“But they didn’t find anything,” comforted Bettie, “so you don’t need to care.”
“But they did. There was a pocketbook under the pin cushion. Mrs. Drayton’s calling cards were in it. She lost hers here the other night, you know—and that wasn’t the worst. There was money in it—more than two dollars.”
“Were you right in the room all the time?” queried horrified Bettie.
“No, I happened to go upstairs quietly and there they were looking in all our bureau drawers and under our mattresses and even in the pockets of our clothes. They had already found the purse.”
“Was Abbie there?”
“No, she was down in the kitchen. Doctor Rhodes sent for me and for Abbie to go to the office. He asked us which of us took that pocketbook and I could see that poor old Abbie was just as surprised as I was—you know you can always see just what she thinks. And, oh! Abbie thought I took it. She gave me such a suspicious look.
“And then, Doctor Rhodes asked her if she had ever known of my stealing anything before that. Oh, think of him asking that! And Abbie—well, you know Abbie is never very positive about anything. She said ‘I don’t know. I don’t guess I ever did.’ But I could just see that she thought I had taken that miserable purse. She’s so simple minded that she believes anything you tell her. She could see that those Rhodes people were accusing me, so she believes, of course, they were right.”
“But we don’t,” Jean and Bettie assured her.
“But other people will. I don’t know what to do. I’d run away if I had any place to run to.”
“If you ran away,” said Jean, wisely, “they’d be sure you had done it. It’s braver to stay right here and go on just as usual. We know you didn’t do it—why, we know you didn’t. And tomorrow when I have my drawing lesson I’ll tell Mrs. Henry Rhodes that you told me all about it and I’ll let her see that Bettie and I believe in you. And she’ll tell Doctor and Mrs. Rhodes—I’ll ask her to. Mrs. Henry understands girls; and she always helps us when we ask her to.”
“Don’t worry,” comforted Bettie. “It’ll come out all right—I know it will. Things always do if you just wait long enough.”
“I wonder,” said Isabelle’s fretful voice in the hall, “what’s happened to dinner—it’s ten minutes past the time.”
“My goodness!” cried Sallie, “I forgot all about that bell.”
“I wish,” said Jean, after Sallie had scurried away down the corridor, “that Sallie wasn’t a boarding school orphan. She’s much too nice. I like her ever so much.”
“Yes,” agreed Bettie, “she’s one of the sweetest girls in this school even if she hasn’t any clothes or pocket money or anything. And I’d believe in her even if they found a bushel of strange purses under her pin cushion.”
“I used to think I liked to get letters,” said Henrietta, walking up and down the long veranda, arm in arm with Hazel Benton and Jean, “but now I don’t. My sweet old grandmother doesn’t say much but I can see that she’s worried to death because she doesn’t hear from my father—she always asks if I’ve heard. We haven’t either of us had a word since last June. Of course, often it is two or three months between letters because he gets into such unget-at-able places; and when there, gets so interested in what he is doing that he doesn’t realize how the time is getting away, and quite often there are no postoffices that he can possibly reach. But he does try to write often enough to keep us from worrying. Then there are some people in England who look after his money and other business matters for him. Well, grandmother says they haven’t heard from him; and she thought perhaps I’d brought my last letter from him with me—it had the name of a place that he might have gone to in it. But I left it in Lakeville—I think I can tell her just where to look for it—in one of those lovely little boxes that he sent me from India.”
“It must be lovely,” breathed Hazel, “to get presents from India.”
“It is—when I’m getting them. But now I don’t like any of Grandmother’s letters. I just hate to open them. She’s trying not to frighten me and at the same time she’s just scaring me to pieces. I didn’t think much about it before I left home last fall, but when I didn’t get a single thing from him at Christmas time (he always sends me things for Christmas) I was sure there was something wrong. And then, of course, I began to think of all the things that might happen to a man that looks at a map and then plunges right into it, whether it’s wet or dry, the way Daddy does. And goodness! It’s a wonder there’s a man left on this earth. I can imagine such awful things. I wake up in the night and worry for hours.”
“What does your father do for a living?” asked Hazel.
“He doesn’t do anything for a living,” explained Henrietta, who for some time had been wearing a worried expression that was new to her. “He just does what he does because he’s perfectly crazy about digging up things—like tombs and buried cities and old marble statues. He’d rather find the nick that came out of a prehistoric platter than to own a brand new set of dishes.”
“He must be quite handy with a shovel by this time,” said Hazel.
“Oh, he doesn’t do the digging himself,” explained Henrietta. “He hires folks—natives mostly. They do the actual digging but he is always right there to make sure that they work carefully. Otherwise they’d smash valuable finds and that would be worse than not digging them up at all. He knows a wonderful lot about pottery and old metals and marbles and—just loads of things. He’s an archæologist.”
“No wonder you were able to spell the whole school down on that word, yesterday,” said Hazel. “It must be wonderful to have a father like that.”
“It would be,” returned Henrietta, soberly, “if he didn’t have to take such dreadful risks.”
“He has been lost several times,” comforted Jean, “and he has always turned up again all right.”
“Yes, but once he was sick and almost died of a horrible fever; and another time some Arabs robbed him and kept him for three months in a perfectly dreadful prison, and another time his guides got frightened and deserted him and he had to buy himself back from the folks that captured him.”
“No wonder you can tell us stories on the front stairs,” exclaimed Hazel. “But isn’t there any way to search for him?”
“Well, there’s this about it. If Mr. Henshaw, in London, gets really worried, he’ll send a relief expedition to hunt him up. They did it once before.”
“Well,” said Hazel, “I hope they’ll find him. And that reminds me—speaking of lost things and things that you dig up—my precious lapis lazuli beads are gone. I wore them to church two Sundays ago; and I know I put them back in their case, in my bureau drawer. When I opened it this morning, the case was empty. I reported it to Doctor Rhodes at once and it’s on the bulletin board right now. Those beads don’t look like so very much but they cost a young fortune. They’re good. You see, I have a daughterless aunt who gives me lovely things—except when she goes alone to pick them out as she did those pink stockings; she’s color-blind, unfortunately. Never anything useful, you know, just luxuries. Mother says Aunt Annabel hasn’t a sensible idea in her head.”
Jean laughed suddenly. Then she explained the cause of her mirth.
“I had a funny thought,” said she. “If Hazel’s aunt and Marjory’s Aunty Jane were shaken up in a bag, it might make two average aunts, mightn’t it, Henrietta? Marjory’s aunt doesn’t believe in luxuries—”
“Then,” interrupted Hazel, with an odd, searching look at Jean, “Marjory doesn’t have very many?”
“None at all,” returned Jean. “She’s really an abused child. But I’m sure her aunt thinks all the world of her.”
“Marjory was crazy about those blue beads of mine,” said Hazel. “I let her wear them once in awhile before Christmas.”
“That’s so,” said Henrietta. “You and Marjory were quite chummy for awhile, weren’t you? Why aren’t you chummy now, if a lady may ask?”
“I don’t know,” returned Hazel, evasively. “That is, I don’t care to say. We just aren’t friends.”
“If it’s anything that Gladys de Milligan has said,” offered Henrietta, “you don’t need to believe it. That girl has tried to say mean things to me about every girl in this school. She’s a wretched little beast and I detest her.”
“I don’t like her,” said Hazel, “and I don’t listen to her when I can help it, but some of the things she’s said have been true.”
“That’s the worst of Gladys,” said Jean. “She always manages to mix a little truth in with her yarns; and that makes people believe them.”
“Mercy!” whispered Henrietta, a few minutes later. “How long have Gladys and Grace been walking just behind us? How much do you suppose they heard?”
That very night, during the dancing hour, Marjory Vale was one of a group of girls clustered about Henrietta, who was demonstrating a new dance, that later became exceedingly popular.
Marjory, in the middle of the floor, was plainly visible when she pulled her handkerchief from her pocket. Something came with it—a long string of dull blue beads. The metal clasp had been caught in the hemstitching of the handkerchief but now came loose, allowing the heavy beads to land noisily on the hardwood floor. Marjory gazed at them for a long moment.
“For goodness’ sakes!” gasped Marjory, genuinely surprised. “How did I do that?”
“My beads!” shrieked Hazel, springing from her chair and pouncing on the necklace. “Marjory Vale! You took those beads out of my drawer.”
“My beads!” shrieked Hazel, pouncing on the necklace
“I never did,” said astonished Marjory, turning crimson and looking the very picture of guilt. “I noticed those beads on your neck the night of the ice cream festival—I haven’t seen them from that moment to this. I don’t know how they got in my pocket. Just before dinner time I rushed up and got into this dress—I always dance in this one, you know, and had laid it out on my bed before I went to walk. We were late getting back and I had to hurry into my clothes. And this is the first time I’ve taken my handkerchief out tonight.”
“I suppose it is your handkerchief,” said Hazel, rather unpleasantly.
“Why, no,” said Marjory, “it isn’t. It has Dorothy Miller’s name on it.”
“Then you couldn’t have gotten it by accident,” said Hazel. “The North Corridor washing comes up on a different day from yours.”
“I don’t know how I got it,” said Marjory, two large tears rolling down her cheeks. “But I—I think you’re just mean to me, Hazel. And I liked you.”
“Come and sit down,” said Sallie, slipping an arm about Marjory. “I know just how you feel.”
A curious thing had happened just after those heavy beads crashed to the floor. The older Mrs. Rhodes, seated near the wall to watch the dancing, turned her glittering black eyes toward Mrs. Henry Rhodes and the two women exchanged a most peculiar look. Then, with one accord, they rose and left the room.
Five minutes later, Mrs. Henry had taken a curious bundle from the very back corner of Marjory’s bureau drawer. She placed it on the bed and the two women proceeded to untie a large handkerchief, such as most of the girls wore with their middies.
The bundle contained two of the purses lost on the night of the concert but they were now empty, a ring that Mrs. Rhodes herself had lost, a wrist watch belonging to one of the Seniors, a number of handkerchiefs marked with other girls’ names, a silk sweater that belonged unmistakably to Augusta and various other small but incriminating objects. Nearly everything still bore its former owner’s name.
“So it’s Marjory Vale!” said Mrs. Rhodes.
“It looks that way,” said Mrs. Henry, “but—”
“Tell Doctor Rhodes to come right up here,” ordered the older woman. “Then you tell the Vale girl that she’s wanted in her room.”
Marjory found the Rhodes family standing beside her bed and pointing accusingly at the opened bundle.
“What have you to say to this?” demanded Doctor Rhodes.
“What is it?” asked Marjory.
“Don’t try to brazen it out,” said Mrs. Rhodes, in her most terrible manner. “You know very well what it is. We found this bundle in your bureau drawer hidden under your clothes. Whose sweater is this?”
“It looks very much like Augusta’s,” returned Marjory.
“Whose watch is that?”
“I don’t know. It isn’t mine.”
“Is this your ring?”
“Not any of those things are mine. Those handkerchiefs seem to be Miss Wilson’s. There’s a name on them.”
“Where is the money that was in these pocketbooks? Mrs. Bryan lost seven dollars and Mrs. Brown lost five—their cards are still in their purses.”
“I’m sure I don’t know. I’ve had my thirty cents a week and that’s all. If you really found those things in my drawer, somebody else must have put them there. I didn’t.”
The Rhodes family didn’t know exactly what to think. Marjory was sometimes thoughtlessly just a little bit impertinent, sometimes inclined to giggle when the occasion demanded sobriety, sometimes fidgety when quietness would have seemed more fitting; but Mrs. Henry Rhodes who, of the three, knew her best, had never known her to attempt to lie. If anything, indeed, she could recall times when Marjory had seemed almost too truthful.
“I think,” said Mrs. Henry, with a kind hand on Marjory’s shoulder, “we had better let this matter rest a little until something else comes up. There is something very queer about it. That pocketbook in Sallie’s room and now this. And everything so clearly marked.”
“But I don’t want this matter to rest,” protested Marjory. “I want it cleared up right away tonight. My goodness! This is just awful. I do love those beads of Hazel’s; but I didn’t take them. And, oh dear! There are girls that are going to believe I did unless you clear things up at once. I don’t want folks to think things like that about me.”
“Of course we’ll do what we can,” assured Mrs. Henry, “but it may take a little time. You must be patient for a little while, even if you have to rest under a suspicion that you don’t deserve. Shall I take these things away?”
“Please do.”
“And you know nothing at all about them?” asked the older Mrs. Rhodes. “You’re not keeping them for Sallie Dickinson?”
“For Sallie? Oh, no. Sallie wouldn’t have taken them—I’m sure of that.”
“What about your roommate?”
“Henrietta? Why! Henrietta wouldn’t either.”
“Don’t worry too much,” advised Mrs. Henry. “You’d better go to bed and forget your troubles for tonight.”
When Henrietta went to her room almost an hour later, she found poor little Marjory huddled in a small heap on her cot, weeping bitterly. Between sobs she told Henrietta what had happened.
“Cheer up,” said Henrietta, kissing Marjory’s hot ear because that was the only dry spot in sight. “We wanted to come sooner but we didn’t dare; you know it’s against the rules to go to our rooms during a social evening; but Jean is going to slip in after ‘Lights Out’ and cuddle you a little. That’s a good deal for Jean to do, you know, when she always behaves as well as she can. And it isn’t as bad as you think. I believe in you—that’s one. The rest of the Lakeville girls believe in you—that’s four more. You believe in yourself, that’s six. Sallie and little Jane Pool adore you, Maude swears by you and there are others—”
“It’s the others that worry me,” sighed Marjory. “They’re going to be just beastly to me, I know.”
Marjory was right. If several of the girls were not “Just beastly” they were pretty close to it. One of Hazel’s beads had been broken and that fact made Hazel more unforgiving than she might have been. Before long, too, the story of the black bundle found in the little girl’s room leaked out (no one knew just how), and many were the scornful glances cast at poor Marjory. If she had been unpopular before, she was considerably worse than unpopular now. She seemed to shrink visibly under the scathing looks of her schoolmates. She even began, it was noticed, to wear a guilty look that proved exasperating to Henrietta.
“Hold your head up,” Henrietta would say, vigorously shaking her little friend. “You haven’t a thing to be ashamed of. For mercy’s sake, look folks right in the eye as you used to. You’re not half as bad as you look. You’re a good child. Well, then, look like a good child.”
“I can’t help wondering,” confessed poor Marjory, “if I took those things in my sleep. Those blue beads—I just loved them.”
“And that horrible magenta sweater of Augusta’s—I suppose you loved that too.”
“Well, of course, I’d have to be asleep to take that. But do you think I could have taken those things in my sleep?”
“Of course you didn’t, Marjory. You didn’t take them at all. It was some kind of an accident. I’ve thought sometimes that poor old Abbie wasn’t quite right. You know how absent minded she is. I don’t think she’d steal anything; but she goes around in sort of a daze and her hands keep plucking at things, as if her mind were in one room and her body in another, like the time she set the dining room clock back and then accused everybody else of doing it. She’s always doing things like that. And you know she’s always had to do such a lot of picking up after years and years of careless girls—well, perhaps she’s gotten the habit of picking up things unconsciously and putting them in places where they don’t belong.”
“Well, anyway,” pleaded Marjory, “do watch me. If you catch me taking things in my sleep I hope you’ll be able to prove that I am asleep. And let’s all of us keep an eye on poor old Abbie daytimes. You might be right about her.”
“A letter for Miss Henrietta Bedford,” said Sallie’s voice at the door. “Charles was late again today. Hope it’s a nice one, Henrietta.”
Henrietta ripped her letter open hastily and read it.
“It isn’t a nice one. It’s from my grandmother. That London man that looks after Father’s affairs has started for China to hunt for him. Mr. Henshaw thinks he went to Shanghai but isn’t sure. You see, girls, there really is cause for alarm. I’d like to go right over there and help search for him; but of course I couldn’t. And it’s awfully hard to have nothing to do but wait.”
During the dark days when Marjory and Sallie were under a cloud of suspicion; when Henrietta was worried and unhappy about her much loved and missing father and when Maude was again in disgrace with Miss Woodruff, it was natural that this little group of warm friends should spend the leisure moments of the long afternoons together. And of course Cora, Jane Pool, Jean, Mabel and Bettie, always loyal, no matter what happened, stayed with them. But, in spite of the fact that these were the unhappiest days that these particular girls had ever spent, they were not without some brighter moments. And Maude Wilder, you may be sure, managed to provide some of the brightest.
On one of these afternoons, Maude found it necessary to explain to Sallie (who slept on the upper floor and had therefore missed the fun) the cause of her present disgrace.
“Of course I ought not to have done it,” said Maude. “But you know they took us to the movies Saturday afternoon to see ‘Treasure Island.’”
“Yes,” said Sallie. “I had to stay home to clean the silver—Annie had a sore finger.”
“And you know how sad we all were over the hymns Sunday night?”
“We always are,” returned Sallie.
“Well, when we were all trailing sadly up the front stairs to bed, afterwards, I had a lovely idea. I thought it would be fun to dress up just like one of those lovely ‘Treasure Island’ pirates so I did it—bloomers, sash, black eyebrows, whiskers, black hat with sweeping plume and everything. I was a bold buccaneer all right, wasn’t I, girls?”
“Yes,” assured Cora, “she looked the part, provided you didn’t examine her too closely.”
“Of course, after I was all fixed up, I wanted other folks to enjoy the fun too; so I started out in this corridor. I had a lovely time. I poked my head in at one door after another and growled in a deep bass voice:
“‘Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!’“Of course Isabelle shrieked and Augusta screamed and Lillian yelped like a puppy and Marjory squealed; and altogether this corridor was full of lovely noises when I slipped out of it. I got across the square hall all right and into the North Corridor. I had a lovely time there, too. Victoria just laughed, but Gladys gasped like a fish and pretended to faint and the Miller girls fell into each other’s arms and bleated. It was just heavenly. And then suddenly it was all over. The bell rang for ‘Lights Out,’ and there was I at the far end of the North Corridor. All that long way from my own room.”
“What did you do?” asked Sallie.
“Well, you know a swarthy pirate doesn’t light up very well in the dark; so, knowing that I was no longer a fearsome sight, I started to sneak back to my own room. I started all right, but just then Mrs. Henry’s door opened and Miss Woodruff came out. I’d have been all right even then, but as luck would have it, the hairbrush that I had thrust into my manly belt dropped with a horrid clatter on the hardwood floor.
“But I was right near the vacant room at the end of the North Corridor. The door was open and I slipped in. And slid under the bed. And, my goodness! You could hear my heart beat all over the place; and you know what ears our dear Miss Woodruff has.
“What did she do but come into that room and sit on the very bed I was under and listen. It was awful. She sat and sat and sat and listened. And I knew that Mrs. Henry was standing just outside her own door listening too. I didn’t dare breathe, but my heart kept right on thumping like a brass knocker on a front door. It was moonlight outside, the shade was up part way and she was sitting on the side next the window. Her skirt was pulled up a little way at the back so I could see her thick ankles very plainly and a little of her fatted calf above them.
“Girls, I just couldn’t help it. I had to pinch her leg. I had to do it. I know it was crazy. I know it was the very last thing I should have done; but my thumb and finger went right out and did it.
“She let out the grandest shriek you ever did hear, and streaked out of there as if a whole regiment of pirates were at her heels. Mrs. Henry switched on all the lights and came on a run; and all the North Corridor girls popped out of their rooms and Miss Woodruff came back. And there was I, a crushed and humiliated pirate, crawling out on all fours; but Miss Woodruff looked so funny that I just looked up at her and said as sadly as I could: ‘Nous avons les raisins blancs et noirs mais pas de cerises.’ And of course all the North Corridor girls roared. I knew they would.”
“What did she do to you?” asked Sallie, when the girls’ shrieks of mirth had finally subsided. They loved Maude’s tales of her own dreadful doings quite as well as Maude loved to tell them.
“She said I was a bad influence to you younger girls—”
“You’re not,” said Henrietta. “Not one of us would attempt to follow in your wild footsteps. We wouldn’t dare.”
“And she said that I ought not to give way to my wicked impulses—”
“They’re, not really wicked,” said Jean. “At least you never do anything sneaky and you always tell the truth.”
“And,” finished Maude, “I’m perfectly incorrigible and I shall never grow up to be a lady.”
“I think you will,” laughed Henrietta. “The good die young, you know.”
“Didn’t she punish you?” asked Sallie.
“Didn’t she?” returned Maude. “I have to learn and recite a whole Chapter of American History. Prose, mind you. And she picked out the very dullest chapter in the whole book.”
“I’ll say this for Miss Woodruff,” laughed Henrietta. “Sometimes she shows remarkable ingenuity in her punishments. That one will keep Maude out of mischief for some time.”
“I wanted dreadfully to go to that movie,” confessed Sallie. “I read that book last vacation and I loved it. But Mrs. Rhodes keeps finding more and more things for me to do Saturdays and I just can’t get through in time to go any place.”
“Tell us about your own people,” pleaded Jean. “You know you always promised to.”
“Yes,” begged Bettie, “begin way back at the very beginning and tell us how it all happened. Perhaps our friend Mr. Black might tell us what to do in a case like that—we write to him every week you know. He might know how to find some of your lost people.”
“I’m sure it’s too late to do any good,” said Sallie, soberly. “But I’ll tell you about it. To begin with, I was about nine years old when my mother died. We were living then in a little bit of a town in Wisconsin. We had always moved about a great deal. You see, my father was always trying new things and new places—he used to say that he was a rolling stone; and then my mother would say: ‘Never mind, John, you’ll roll to the right spot some day.’
“Well, after my mother was gone, we went to Chicago and lived for a little while in a big apartment house. The only person that we knew very well was an old man that everybody called ‘Grandpa’ but he wasn’t really my grandfather—or anybody’s that I know of. He had a couple of rooms next to ours. I think he must have done some sort of writing for a living—copying perhaps—but I’m not very sure about that part of it. Anyway, he used to carry written papers away in an old black portfolio and come home with it empty. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was bent over his desk writing. He was very absent minded—always hunting for his spectacles when they were on top of his head and often putting his teakettle on to boil and letting it go dry. Father used to remind him to put his coat on when he was going out.
“I suppose my father found me a good deal of a nuisance daytimes. Perhaps he was more tied down than he liked to be and there were no relatives to look after me. I know that my mother’s people were dead and my father said once that he had nobody in the world but me.
“Anyway, he decided to put me into a girls’ school. He picked one out, bought me some clothes and a small trunk and told me that I must keep my new things nice and clean, because, in just about a week, I was going on the cars to a good school for little girls, where there would be lots of good women to take care of me while he was away at work.”
Sallie’s face wore a strange but very sweet expression while she was telling her story. The girls gazed at her sympathetically and listened intently. There was not a sound in the room but Sallie’s gentle voice.
“The very next day,” Sallie continued, “my father was taken sick. I don’t know what ailed him, but he was very sick. He gave Grandpa some money and asked him to take me to that school when the time came and Grandpa promised to do it. Of course I didn’t want to go when Father was so sick; but Grandpa said I must be good and not worry my father, so I had to go. Well, I suppose it hadn’t occurred to my father to write to that school to reserve a place for me—I know now that that is the proper thing to do; but lots of parents don’t seem to know about it. Several have turned up here with an unexpected girl on opening day; but this is a very large school and perhaps not one of the most popular ones so it doesn’t make so much difference—there are always vacant rooms.
“But when Grandpa presented me at that other school—and I couldn’t tell you where it was if you offered me a million dollars—it was full and they couldn’t take me—or at least they wouldn’t. They gave Grandpa quite a long list of other schools and some catalogues and we went to two other schools before we found one that would take me.”
“Was it this one?” breathed Bettie.
“Yes, this very one. But, by the time we reached this place, we had been getting on and off trains all day. I was so sleepy that I tumbled off my chair and I guess poor old Grandpa was just about walking in his sleep. We’d had a dreadful day. Somebody, I don’t know who, led me off and put me to bed. That’s the last I’ve ever seen of either my father or that poor old Grandpa.”
“But didn’t you write?” queried Jean.
“Yes, indeed. So did Doctor Rhodes—not this Doctor—hum—well, this Doctor’s cousin. But our letters came back from the Dead Letter Office.”
“What does a dead letter look like?” demanded Mabel, with sudden curiosity.
“Just like any other kind,” returned Sallie, “except that they come in a special envelope.”
“Then,” said Jean, “for anything you know to the contrary, your father and this grandfather person may still be living in that apartment, in Chicago?”
“No,” returned Sallie. “They’re not. You see my tuition was paid for the full school year. It was getting along toward the summer vacation when Doctor Rhodes began to write to my father. Afterwards he went to that apartment in Chicago to ask about him; but they could tell him nothing more about him. Then Doctor Rhodes went to a number of hospitals and learned that a John Dickinson had been discharged, after a long, long illness; and that he was still very far from strong when he left the hospital to look for work.”
“The apartment people told Doctor Rhodes that poor old Grandpa had had a breakdown and had been placed in an asylum. Doctor Rhodes visited that place but the poor old man had forgotten all that he had ever known of either me or my father; and quite soon after that he died.”
“Then,” said Henrietta, “your father may still be living.”
“Yes,” returned Sallie. “But, if he were, wouldn’t he hunt for me until he found me? There’s this about it. I’m sure that he thought that he was putting me in a place where I’d be safer and better cared for than I could be with him.”
“Did he have very much money?” asked practical Henrietta.
“I don’t think he had a great deal. He used to say that he was a poor man; and the houses we lived in were always rather small and poor. My mother, I think, had belonged to nice people. As nearly as I can remember, she spoke nicely and wouldn’t let me use slang; and I think her father was a clergyman—I can remember an old photograph; but I’m not very sure about that.
“And here I am now, just like poor old Abbie—a boarding school orphan, with not a relative in the world.”
“No, you’re not like Abbie,” declared Jean. “We won’t let you be like Abbie. You’re smart enough to crawl out of your hole; but Abbie never was.”
“Now,” pleaded Henrietta, “tell us the secret about the Rhodes family. We’re dying of curiosity about that.”
“No,” replied Sallie, firmly. “If I were paying my way with real money I might break my promise and tell. But I don’t know that I would, either; it would take a lot of courage to break a promise to Doctor Rhodes. But, of course, as long as I owe him for my bread and butter, I just couldn’t do it.”
“Of course you couldn’t,” agreed Maude. “It wouldn’t be honorable.”
“That’s just the way I feel about it,” sighed Sallie. “And there isn’t really anything very dreadful about that secret after all.”
“Except our curiosity,” said Henrietta, “that’s just eating us.”
“Pile off this bed, girls,” said Cora, who had looked at her watch. “It’s ten minutes to dinner time and Sallie has left all your hair standing right on end.”
“Say, Sallie, ring the old bell fifty-nine seconds late,” pleaded Maude. “I have to change my dress and the other one buttons behind.”
“I’ll button it all the way downstairs,” promised Cora.
Marjory was still more or less in disgrace the day that Doctor Rhodes announced that at last he had secured a new French teacher to take Madame Bolande’s place.
“Her name is—Ah! I’ve forgotten it. No, Miss—er—Miss Flower. That’s it. Miss Flower. She is not a French woman but comes very well recommended. It has been difficult at this particular time to find exactly the right person; but I think you will all be pleased.”
Doctor Rhodes was to prove a better prophet than he suspected. When the time came, some of the girls were more than pleased.
“Flower,” whispered irrepressible Maude, into a convenient ear. “She must be a regular daisy.”
“Perhaps she’s a Texas sunflower,” returned Victoria.
That afternoon, of course, all the Highland Hall girls, bristling with curiosity, congregated on the veranda to watch for the station hack.
“I’m mighty glad to give up my job,” said Henrietta, pausing near one of the many groups. “Eighty minutes of hard labor a day are quite a strain. That last Theolog was used up in less than a week and all my skirt bands are getting loose—all that hard labor with French verbs. I hope Miss Flower is an improvement on Madame Bolande.”
“Madame Bolande is the best French teacher I’ve had,” said Gladys de Milligan, rather pointedly. “I haven’t learned a thing since she left.”
“Of course, if you like that kind,” retorted Henrietta. “Come on, Hazel. Let’s stand on the railing and see if the old ’bus is on the way. I don’t have to be dignified any more.”
Ten minutes later, a young woman descended from the timeworn hack. As she paid the driver, she stood in a patch of sunlight. From the veranda she was plainly visible and rather more than sixty eager young eyes, with no intention of rudeness on their owners’ part, took in every detail of the new teacher’s neat costume and dwelt pleasurably on her very attractive countenance. But suddenly there was a most remarkable commotion on that veranda. Five girls were scrambling down the steps, regardless of seated schoolmates, and five joyful voices were shrieking:
“It’s Miss Blossom! It is! It is! It’s our Miss Blossom! Our own Miss Blossom!”
“And this,” cried Mabel, triumphantly, “is the Flower we get!”
Much to the new teacher’s surprise and bewilderment, she was seized and hugged and kissed and squeezed by five excited girls.
“Well, I declare,” said she, when she could get a good look at them. “I wondered if this school always welcomed new teachers this way. If it isn’t Bettie, and Jean and Marjory and Henrietta and Mabel! Isn’t this great. And I thought I was going to be all alone among strangers. This is certainly too good to be true. Jean, you look just the same and good enough to eat. Bettie, you’re taller and plumper too—you’re looking fine. Marjory, you little mite; you aren’t as big as you were the last time I saw you—are they abusing you at this place? Here’s Henrietta as lovely as ever—but you’re pale, my dear. And Mabel—Why, Mabel, I do believe you’re taller—and thinner. And aren’t you good looking! But you all look as sweet as peaches and cream to me.”
“If we’d all picked out the person that we wanted most to come to this place,” declared Mabel earnestly, “that person would have been you.”
Every one liked Miss Blossom, the pleasant young woman who had spent a summer in Lakeville and had played in Dandelion Cottage with Jean, Bettie, Marjory and Mabel; and had later paid them a visit at Pete’s Patch, where she had met pretty Henrietta.
Never was teacher more popular. Before long, almost every girl in the school was completely in love with the charming young woman. And now, some of the girls who had listened most credulously to Gladys’s unpleasant tales about the Lakeville children, began, little by little, to doubt these tales. Miss Blossom was so very attractive, so genuinely good, so admirable in every way, that it couldn’t be possible that she would like those four Michigan girls if Laura’s tales were entirely true. And there was Henrietta, too, evidently firm in her belief in Marjory’s honesty. Surely if those two really particular persons considered Marjory a nice child, perhaps she wasn’t as black as she appeared to be painted.
The next dancing evening, Victoria Webster delighted Marjory by inviting her to two-step and Debbie Clark asked her for a waltz.
One night, almost a week after the new teacher’s arrival, Jean and Bettie were spending an evening in Miss Blossom’s own room. They had slipped away from the West Corridor without telling the other Lakeville girls where they were going. They appeared to have some weighty matter on their minds and were evidently not quite at ease.
“We want to tell you something,” explained Jean, fidgeting a little in her chair. “It’s a long story and some of it is quite horrid; but we need your help.”
“We wanted to come sooner,” added Bettie, “but we thought we ought not to bother you until you were settled and a little bit used to the school.”
“Very thoughtful of you,” assured Miss Blossom. “But now we have a long evening before us and I’m ready to listen with all my ears.”
So Jean, with some help from Bettie, told about the various thefts of money and other things, about Marjory and the blue beads, about Sallie and the stolen purse under her pincushion and the handkerchief full of purloined articles in Marjory’s drawer. About Laura and her mean little way of saying unpleasant things about the Lakeville girls.
And then they told Miss Blossom what they had been careful to mention to no one else. They recounted their past experience with Laura in Lakeville; told how she had maliciously destroyed the wonderful vine that grew in their garden; and how now she had stolen the priceless treasures from their precious treasure boxes. How she had taken even the precious handkerchiefs that Miss Blossom herself had embroidered for the girls.
“Miss Blossom,” confessed Jean, who was obviously not enjoying her task, “we haven’t known what we ought to do. We thought, if Laura had changed for the better, that it wouldn’t be right for us to tell that she had changed her name and done things to her hair; and that when we knew her in Lakeville, she was common and dishonest and all that. When she came here she seemed improved in sort of a way; even if it wasn’t exactly a way we liked. And of course we didn’t want to be unfair to her in any way or to do anything that wasn’t kind. We couldn’t like her; but we were perfectly decent to her. And even now, we may be mistaken. We may be wronging her; but we can’t help thinking—Well, here is this thing about Marjory and that other thing about Sallie—”
“Those pocketbooks,” said Bettie, “in their two rooms. Marjory and I are almost sure that one person did that.”
“I think so too,” said Jean. “But I’ve thought and thought and thought; but I just didn’t know what I ought to do about it—or if I really ought to do anything. But there is poor Marjory getting thinner and thinner and our poor sweet Sallie—we do love Sallie, every one of us—with no people of her own to take her part. It does seem as if something ought to be done.”
“Don’t worry about it any more,” said Miss Blossom, with a wonderfully soothing hand on Jean’s troubled brow. “Something is going to be done. Our Marjory is going to hold her head up again and our Sallie is going to be proved honest; but you don’t need to think about it for another minute. You did perfectly right in coming to me and I’m glad you came. But now you must run along to bed—there’s the nine o’clock bell. Good night and pleasant dreams to both of you.”
Miss Blossom spent the next half hour with the Rhodes family. She told them what she knew of the Lakeville girls and of Gladys de Milligan, who had once lived in Lakeville as plain Laura Milligan.
“A silly girl with a foolish mother,” commented Doctor Rhodes. “Yet, strangely enough, there is no pupil in this school who has higher marks in her studies or for general deportment than this overdressed Milligan girl.”
“And I’m sure,” said Mrs. Henry, with a twinkle in her blue eye, “that Gladys would come first in any gum chewing contest.”
The next morning, during school hours, Mrs. Rhodes and Mrs. Henry Rhodes searched Laura’s room. There was nothing in it that did not belong to either Laura or her roommate Victoria Webster. Under the cover on the dresser top they found Laura’s trunk key and carried it to the attic trunk room.
There was nothing unusual about the tray of Laura’s trunk except the large hole that Mabel had made by tumbling into it. But when the tray was lifted out and several layers of clothing were removed, it looked very much as if all the mysteries were solved. A fat little roll of banknotes, tied up neatly with a pink ribbon, a candy box full of silver coins, several pairs of silk stockings marked with the names of the three Seniors, every article of jewelry that had been reported missing, as well as some others that the careless owners had not yet missed.