“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.
It looked very much as if all the mysteries were solved
“My opera glasses!” exclaimed Mrs. Henry.
“My real lace collar!” cried Mrs. Rhodes. “I suppose this is Gladys’s trunk?”
“Oh, certainly. Can’t you smell the perfume? Nobody else uses this kind. Besides, her name is on the outside.”
“Yes, that’s right. Now, I wonder what we’d better do about this.”
“We’ll have to talk it over with Father. I’m afraid there’s no doubt this time.”
“I’m sure there isn’t,” returned Mrs. Rhodes. “It’s the de Milligan girl without question. I don’t know why I didn’t suspect her sooner.”
“Well, I didn’t,” said Mrs. Henry. “And she was right in my own corridor. I’m awfully sorry about all this.”
“I’d have been sorrier,” returned the older woman, grimly, “if it had been any other girl. I never did like this one.”
When Laura was called into Doctor Rhodes’s office and invited to explain how all those things had found their way into her trunk, she appeared to be very much surprised. She was sure she didn’t know. She said she supposed that Sallie Dickinson had put them there, or if not Sallie, one of the maids; or possibly Marjory Vale. Marjory was ever a deceitful child, much given to thievery. She herself had often warned the other girls against Marjory.
Laura, standing with her back against the wall, seemed quite calm and unconcerned, except that she shifted her chewing gum from side to side with greater frequency than usual.
Doctor Rhodes had rather a terrible eye. Two of them in fact. He fixed them both on Laura’s unperturbed countenance and gazed so very sternly at her that presently Laura began to quail. She gulped suddenly and swallowed her gum. And then she began to stammer excuses.
She liked pretty things. She couldn’t resist taking things when it was so easy to do it. Her fingers liked to take things. She didn’t always want what she had taken. Sometimes she wished afterwards that she hadn’t taken them. Her father was stingy and wouldn’t give her expensive trinkets. Her mother would but didn’t have the money. Her mother wanted her to have nice things.
When did she take the things? Oh, at night sometimes. Her roommate, Victoria Webster, slept like a log and didn’t miss her if she left the room. Or daytimes, by getting upstairs ahead of the other girls it was easy enough to dash into a room, grab a bracelet or a pin left carelessly about and hide it in her pocket. There were plenty of chances like that, when girls were so heedless with their belongings. Really, it was the girls’ own fault much more than hers. Yes, she had put those beads in Marjory’s pocket while the dress was on Marjory’s bed, and she had placed that purse in Sallie’s room. She wanted people to think they had taken them—it had seemed a clever thing to do—perhaps it wasn’t as clever as she had thought. But if Doctor Rhodes would just forgive her this time, she wouldn’t touch another thing, ever.
“But what about Sallie?” questioned Doctor Rhodes, hoping to find a little redeeming conscience in Laura. “And that other youngster, Marjory? How are they to be cleared?”
“I don’t care about them,” returned vulgar little Laura, hard-heartedly. “They’re just nobody. Marjory’s folks don’t amount to anything—just a queer old aunt in a small town—and everybody knows Sallie is just nothing—no folks or money or anything else. Now listen (Laura always said ‘Now listen’): My father has made money in the automobile business. He’s richer—”
“Do you mean to say,” demanded Doctor Rhodes, “that you’d actually be willing to let those honest little girls rest under a suspicion that they don’t deserve just because they happen to be poorer than you are? That you’d hide behind them—”
“I don’t care anything about them,” repeated Laura, stubbornly. “They’re nothing to me.”
“However,” returned Doctor Rhodes, “in simple justice, they will have to be cleared—and they are going to be cleared. I care, if you don’t, what happens to those children. It’s my duty to protect my pupils—”
“Well, then,” interrupted Laura, hopefully, “why not protect me? Folks’ll forget all about it after awhile and nobody’ll be hurt so very much. Aw, come on, now. Just forget it all.”
“I’m going to tell the truth,” declared Doctor Rhodes, who was finding Laura quite the most detestable child he had so far encountered. “There is no place in this school for a dishonest girl or for a girl with so little kindness for her fellow pupils. There is such a thing as school spirit—”
“Well, anyhow,” pleaded Laura, “just wait another two weeks. I’m not coming back after Easter vacation; so you might as well wait until then before you give me away, if you’re going to do it. My mother has a friend that says he’ll give me a good job in the movies; and that’s what I’d like to do. You can give those things back to their owners after I’m gone and say any old thing you like about me. It won’t hurt me any then.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have people remember you with liking and respect?” asked Doctor Rhodes, thoroughly shocked by Laura’s hardened conscience. “Have you no shame at all?”
Laura shrugged her shoulders, a trick she had perfected by watching Madame Bolande. She tilted her chin and partly closed her eyes—to show her complete indifference to what people might think of her. She was not at all pretty when she did these things.
“I can see no reason for sparing you in any way,” said Doctor Rhodes, coldly. “You may go to your room now and write for your mother to come for you at once. If she isn’t here inside of three days I shall telegraph for her. Within five minutes after your departure, I shall state on the bulletin board that Miss Gladys de Milligan has been expelled under circumstances that absolutely prove the innocence of every other pupil in this school.”
All this was done. Untruthful Laura, making her farewells airily, told her friends that she was merely going home a little ahead of time in order to have a longer vacation for spring shopping and necessary dressmaking. She’d see them all again right after Easter, and bring back lovely presents for all of them. She borrowed Augusta’s best middy scarf in order, she said, that her mother might select about a dozen like it for her to give to the other girls. Augusta, of course, never saw either cheap little Laura or the precious scarf again.
Laura was certainly not a nice child; but circumstances were against her. She possessed a decidedly foolish, unladylike and not altogether truthful mother so perhaps Laura’s lack of good qualities was not entirely her own fault. With a really nice mother, she might have been a really nice girl; but Mrs. Milligan’s daughter had very little chance.
During the last three days of Laura’s stay, it seemed to Jean that things were not clearing up as rapidly as Miss Blossom had predicted. She wondered if, after all, nothing had been done for Marjory. Poor little Marjory, in spite of Jean’s encouraging words, in spite of Mrs. Henry’s reassuring smiles and Miss Blossom’s hopeful glances, could see no way out of her troubles. Hazel still drew her skirts aside when Marjory passed and snippy little Lillian Thwaite still almost tipped over backwards in her efforts to turn her very small nose up in Marjory’s presence (for sticking-up purposes, it was really a very poor nose). And to Jean’s surprise, there was Laura, apparently perfectly unconcerned, going on just as she always had. Was nothing ever going to be done to clear Marjory and Sallie?
Notwithstanding many unusual kindnesses from her Lakeville friends—even always-hungry Mabel begged her to eat part of her favorite dessert—puzzled Marjory felt that the sky was dark above her and the world a terrible place for little girls just her size. And then, quite suddenly, Laura was whisked away by her mother, and Doctor Rhodes, chalk in hand and frowning prodigiously, was approaching the fateful bulletin board.
You can imagine how, five minutes after Laura’s going, the always curious girls flocked to the bulletin board to see what Doctor Rhodes had posted thereon. How eagerly they read the astonishing announcement and how their tongues wagged afterwards. How glad Marjory and Sallie were to have the mystery cleared away and how relieved the Lakeville girls felt at having their precious Marjory emerge from the cloud that had obscured her happiness for so long a time.
“Right after Gladys’s mother came this morning,” said Sallie, “there was something going on in the office. It sounded very much like a very angry woman telling Doctor Rhodes just what she thought of him; but of course I didn’t stay to listen—I wanted to just awfully. But when I went back afterwards with the message I was waiting to deliver, the lady was gone and poor Doctor Rhodes was mopping perspiration from his forehead, although the room was quite cold. I guessed he’d been having a right trying interview with somebody. He looked perfectly wilted.”
Mabel giggled. “I guess he had one all right if it was Mrs. Milligan. We used to hear her in Lakeville.”
But Jean watched the smoke of the train that was bearing tawdry little Gladys Evelyn de Milligan toward Chicago, and out of this tale, and was sorry.
“Poor foolish Laura,” she breathed, “I’m so sorry you had to be you. You were smart enough to have made a perfectly lovely girl and I did have hopes of you.”
“I didn’t,” said Mabel, “and I’m glad I don’t have to be polite to her any more. It’s hard enough to be polite when you really want to be. But when you’re all impolite inside—”
“We know what you mean, Mabel,” laughed Henrietta. “And now that I know the horrible secret you’ve been keeping from me all this time I am filled with admiration for all four of you. I remember now that you told me long ago about a horrid child named Laura; but I never dreamed that she and Gladys were the same person. And you, Mabel, with your ‘impolite inside’ are a complete surprise. I didn’t think you could keep a secret.”
“Jean made us,” returned Mabel.
“Well,” assured Henrietta, “I think you were right to give Gladys a chance. It was noble of you to do it even if it hasn’t turned out as well as you expected. And isn’t it great to have Sallie and Marjory cleared! And there’s Hazel apologizing this very minute for being so nasty to Marjory about those blue beads.”
“She’s lending them to Marjory,” gasped Jean. “She’s fastening them about Marjory’s neck.”
For the proverbial nine days, tongues wagged furiously at Highland Hall; but seemingly to good purpose. The girls who had allowed doubts of Sallie and Marjory to creep into their hearts now strove earnestly to make up for their former unjust suspicions. Even the Seniors came down from their lofty perches long enough to stuff both girls so full of cream puffs and chocolate creams, dill pickles, ripe olives and angel’s food cake that for three days after this never to be forgotten feast they were unable to eat their regular meals.
“As for my legs,” laughed happy Marjory, after the next social evening, “they’re just ready to drop off—I’ve had so many invitations to dance.”
“So have I,” said Sallie. “Isn’t it great!”
“And the way those two Seniors scrapped over Marjory at the spell down today!” exclaimed Maude. “They both called at once and she was the very first one called. The rest of us were green with envy.”
“We’ve all been more popular lately,” said Bettie. “I’m afraid Laura did us more harm than we realized.”
“I think so, too,” said Jean. “I’ve felt all this week as if large black clouds had rolled away and let a great big chunk of sunshine drop right down into Highland Hall.”
“There’s one cloud left,” mourned Henrietta. “I don’t get a single scrap of encouraging news about my father; and now, every time I look at poor old Abbie, I say: ‘Just suppose anything happens to my grandmother and the family money. Where will I be? Right here washing windows like Abbie and looking for seven years’ bad luck because I’ve smashed a looking glass.’”
“Poor Abbie has enough foolish superstitions to keep her in bad luck for ninety years,” laughed Jean. “You and Sallie seem to be haunted by the same nightmare. I’ll promise you both this; on the day that you and Sallie get to looking just like Abbie, I’ll start for Europe on foot.”
With Laura gone, Highland Hall seemed really a different place. Now, except for occasional scraps among some of the older pupils, one realized that there was a wonderful spirit of friendliness among the girls. Even the once frosty Seniors had thawed to an unusual degree.
“They’ve gotten used to themselves,” explained Sallie, who had had almost six years’ experience with Seniors of assorted kinds. “At first they are always so set up over all their privileges that they just can’t associate with ordinary girls; but after a few months of solitary grandeur they are glad to climb down off their perches and associate with the rest of us. Now that they’re asking us to their spreads and coming to ours they’re having much better times than they did earlier in the year.”
“Of course,” said Maude, with one of her funny grimaces, “you can’t ‘spread’ so very much on thirty cents a week; but our popcorn party was all right and when we all chipped in and bought a barrel of apples—that was great. The Seniors’ heels looked just like anybody else’s when they dove to the bottom of the barrel for the last ones. And our molasses candy pull in the laundry—”
“Ugh!” groaned Mabel, “I was just like a web-footed duck—my hands, I mean. Cora had to scrape me all over with a knife and she didn’t care how much skin she got. It was even on my shoes—”
“What! Your skin?”
“No, the candy. Some folks can pull it when it’s hot and sticky but I never can. It just gets all over the place.”
“Anyway,” said Marjory, wickedly, “the Seniors laughed until they cried, seeing you try, so you contributed something to the entertainment.”
“Isn’t it lovely to have friends?” said Sallie, a little later, when she was seated beside Marjory on the veranda steps.
“Yes,” returned Marjory, a little wistfully, “but I’m not sure that I’m exactly pleased with some of my newest ones. Augusta and Grace Allen told me yesterday that they never did like Gladys. And Isabelle says she’s ashamed to have Clarence know that she ever went with Gladys. Isn’t that just awful—to go back on anybody like that! Of course I don’t care much for Isabelle or Augusta, anyway; but I did think I might like Grace. But now I’m not going to. I like friends that stick.”
“So do I,” agreed Sallie, heartily. “And I think we both have some of the sticking kind.”
One spring morning just after morning prayers when all the pupils were gathered in the Assembly room and Miss Woodruff was ready to call the roll, Doctor Rhodes stood up and said: “One moment, please.”
There was a little creaking all over the room as the girls settled themselves in listening attitudes. Doctor Rhodes was sure to be interesting.
“I have a little confession to make,” said Doctor Rhodes. “Perhaps some of the older girls will remember that I called them into my office immediately on their arrival last fall, told them a piece of very sad news and asked them to keep a secret for me.”
Some of the seats creaked again as several of the older girls nodded their heads.
“I believe,” continued Doctor Rhodes, “that you have all faithfully kept that secret, which is still a secret from the new girls. This is it. I am not the Doctor Charles Rhodes, whose name is in our catalogue and has been in our catalogue for nearly thirty years. I am his cousin, Doctor Julius Rhodes; a physician, not a Doctor of Laws—you have noticed the letters LL.D. after my cousin’s name.
“Some of you will remember that Doctor Rhodes was ill last June at Commencement time. He died in July. I was his nearest relative; and, in time, when his affairs are finally settled, I shall inherit his estate. The lawyers considered it unwise to announce Dr. Rhodes’s death at that time, though of course there were the usual notices in the papers. But no changes were made in the catalogue and no formal notices were sent to the pupils; as it seemed almost certain that any such announcement would cause the attendance for the following year to fall off, perhaps to the lasting detriment of the school. The lawyers suggested that I take charge of the school and keep it going, particularly as Doctor Charles Rhodes had expressed a wish to that effect.
“I was handicapped in one way. The courts were not yet ready to hand over to me the surplus fund of school money in the bank. I had very little capital to put in and certainly no experience with boarding schools for girls. I was not a teacher. Perhaps you have noticed that your instructors, with two exceptions, are members of my own family. They very kindly consented to help me through this first year; and I think you will agree that they have proved fairly good teachers, even if that hasn’t always been their regular profession. Miss Woodruff, of course, and Miss Blossom are regular teachers. I thought I might venture to afford two.
“I think you will agree that my most serious blunder was the engaging of Madame Bolande—I assure you that I didn’t see her first. Except for that one regrettable mistake, everything has gone so well and so prosperously, that I have decided to tell the whole truth now (and take the consequences if there are any) instead of waiting, as my lawyers advised, until my cousin’s estate is fully settled. I shall feel happier with everything quite open and above board. That’s all, except that I feel much indebted to the young ladies who have so kindly kept my secret to the present time.”
Of course, for a day or two after that, Highland Hall buzzed again with excitement and the newer girls besieged the older ones with questions.
“Doctor Charles Rhodes,” explained Sallie, “was a perfectly lovely old man. Everybody just adored him; he was so gentle and sweet. He hadn’t any family of his own left; but he seemed, some way, as if he were everybody’s grandfather. He was wonderfully good to me and to poor old Abbie too. In his time we had our pocket money just as the other girls did—out of his own pocket, I suppose. If Abbie had been bright to start with she wouldn’t have been the forlorn creature that she is now. He gave me every chance to learn; and I’m sure that Abbie had the same chances but was too stupid to take them. Probably no one but a kind man would have kept Abbie; she’s never been good for very much.
“But when this new Rhodes family came, it was all so different. At first, I didn’t like Doctor Julius Rhodes at all—or any of his family. But after awhile I began to see that things were not so terribly easy for them. The housekeeping job proved awfully hard on poor Mrs. Rhodes and she just sort of stiffened up under it in a queer way. I guess she’s a good deal of a mummy anyway and this job makes her more so. She is harder on Abbie and on me than the old housekeeper used to be; but at that her looks are the worst part of her.”
“Well,” agreed Henrietta, “she can’t help her looks—that’s the way she was made.”
“I like Dr. Julius Rhodes much better than I did at first,” continued Sallie. “I hated him at first. Of course he doesn’t look one bit like his cousin; that was one reason. In the next place, I hated having those people flock down here in my dear old Doctor Rhodes’s own home; and in the third place, it didn’t seem quite right to me to keep a thing like that hidden—to let people go on supposing that it was still Doctor Charles Rhodes when it wasn’t. But I overheard Dr. Rhodes and one of those lawyers talking in the office one day and I gathered then that Doctor Rhodes didn’t like keeping that secret himself—he wanted to tell, but the lawyer said it wasn’t good policy. And now, even if this Doctor Rhodes isn’t a lovely, gentle, sweet old man like Doctor Charles, I think he makes a very good head for this school. And when he is able to handle the school funds, there will be more regular teachers and he won’t have to work his family quite so hard.”
“At that,” said Maude, “the family isn’t so bad. Mrs. Henry is a dear, everybody says that old Miss Emily is terribly thorough and Miss Julia certainly makes the girls practise. And you all know, I’d gladly swap Miss Woodruff for any one of them—I still have seven pages of American History to learn by heart and recite.”
“But tell me,” pleaded Henrietta, “did they really open the girls’ letters, as Cora thought they did, to see if they’d written home about that secret.”
“Mercy, no!” replied Sallie. “They have to look over the addresses on those letters. They do it every day. Your folks wouldn’t get half of your letters if they didn’t—the girls are always leaving off towns or states or stamps. But only one of them ever writes ‘Dear Clarence’ on the outside of her envelope.”
The spring did perfectly wonderful things to the land adjacent to Highland Hall. It was really time that something was happening to improve that rather cheerless prospect. During the fall and winter months, the landscape had been mostly brown and gray and black, often more or less disfigured with patches of dingy snow; and a general misty bleakness surrounded the big, rather ugly building. But, with the coming of spring all this was changed. One could now see why the school prospectus had stated that Highland Hall was “beautifully located.”
The building stood at the top of a broad knoll. The level portion of this was covered by a well kept lawn—tall, lanky Charles, with his sandy hair on end and his angular elbows greatly in evidence, might be seen galloping over it with his lawn roller, getting certain bare spots ready for seed. The sloping banks were grassed also but this grass grew at its own sweet will; and then, quite suddenly it wasn’t grass but long stemmed violets. You could gather tremendous bunches of them and still there were millions left—popular Miss Blossom was fairly besieged with bouquets. Then, farther down the hillside were great patches of snowy bloodroot and miniature groves of mandrake with their hidden, creamy, heavily perfumed cups. There were wild crab-apple trees wreathed with wonderful pink and white buds and blossoms. The edges of the unsightly ditches along the road suddenly became brilliantly green and pink with oxalis and there were sheltered nooks along the margin of the grove that were blue with mertensia or purple with the spider lily. Even the dry prairie was bursting forth with bloom; the lovely lavender of the bird’s foot violet and later the showy blossoms of the shooting star. There were gorgeous blue jays and orioles in the trees and meek gray doves in the hedges.
All the girls except Henrietta seemed bubbling over with happiness these days. Even Sallie, dreadfully shabby as to clothes and growing shabbier, was more cheerful, because she loved the spring season at Highland Park; and because she had never before possessed so many warm friends among the pupils. But Henrietta was visibly drooping. Her eyes wore a strained, anxious look and every day at mail time, her brilliant color deserted her, leaving her pale and trembling and quite unlike her usual vivacious self. At sight of a telegram arriving for Doctor Rhodes—and he often received as many as four a week—Henrietta’s lips would turn absolutely white. And several times, on the days when her grandmother’s letters came with no news of her still missing father, the girls had found her weeping. It was decidedly unlike Henrietta to weep.
But even Henrietta loved the wild flowers. Sallie knew where to find the choicest blossoms and Doctor Rhodes, glad to have the girls spend their leisure hours outdoors, even if it did increase their appetites alarmingly, extended their bounds a good half mile toward the south so the girls could roam at will.
One beautiful day, when school was dismissed earlier than usual, Mabel asked permission to take her friends as far as the cottage that contained Charles’s interesting family.
“I’m awfully fond of children,” explained Mabel. “I get lonesome for them when I don’t have any. Several times I’ve given candy and little presents to Charles to take home to those cunning babies; but I’m just dying to see them again and some of the girls want to go, too.”
“I’ve no objection to your seeing them,” said Doctor Rhodes, with a friendly chuckle, “but you are strictly forbidden to accept any invitations to stay with that family and you are not to bring any of them home with you.”
“I won’t,” promised Mabel. “Thank you ever so much for letting us go.”
The long walk over the blossoming prairie was wonderful and the other delighted youngsters thanked Mabel for planning the trip. The children at the cottage proved interesting and sweet and the girls loved them. Tommy remembered Mabel and said: “Please stay wiz us, you is nicer than Lizzie,” which pleased Mabel very much indeed, though of course she didn’t stay. The shy twins soon became friendly and even the baby was smiling and responsive. Mrs. Charles had been making cookies and generously passed them around. Then Maude looked at her watch and said that it was time to start back.
The girls decided to go home by the road that wound along over the prairie and somewhat west of the more direct but pathless route they had taken to the cottage. It was longer but Sallie said that interesting things grew along the edges. Even Sallie, however, was surprised at one thing they discovered. Mabel, who was trudging sturdily along, a little ahead of the others—and of course she had a right to lead the procession since it was her party—suddenly stopped short.
“Mercy!” she gasped. “What’s that!”
“What’s what?” asked Sallie, crowding to the front. “Is it a new flower? Oh! Why, that looks like a little pig!”
“But ’way out here!” cried Maude. “It couldn’t walk so far and there are no farms along here.”
“But the farmers ’way south of here,” returned Sallie, “send them in to the packing houses or down to the trains along this road. Probably this one got spilled out of somebody’s wagon and the driver never missed him.”
“No doubt,” said little Jane Pool, “the other piggies squealed so hard that the poor man never heard the cries of distress from this one.”
“It’s so little and pink and clean,” said Bettie, admiringly.
“But so naked,” objected Marjory. “It really seems as if it ought to be wearing baby clothes—little woolly ones. I’m glad it’s a warm day.”
“See,” said Mabel, “it’s sucking my finger—I think it likes me.”
“It’s hungry,” said Sallie. “It seems too bad to leave it here to starve.”
“But we don’t want any pig,” objected Henrietta. “I don’t think I like pigs.”
“I’m sure I don’t,” said Maude. “Come on, girls, let’s climb up the ladder to that windmill over there and walk all around it on that ledge—I think it’s wide enough. We don’t want to be bothered with any pigs.”
But the lonesome little pig had no intention of being left behind. It trotted along at the girls’ heels and squealed piteously in its efforts to keep up.
“Poor little thing,” said Bettie, “it’s just starving.”
“And tired,” said Mabel. “Every minute or two it loses its footing and rolls right over. It thinks it belongs to us.”
“You’re afraid to pick it up and carry it,” teased Marjory.
“I’m not,” said Mabel. “I’m going to do it. The rest of you can climb all the windmills you want to, but I’m going to be kind to this pig.”
Whereupon kind Mabel picked up the pig and carried it. At first, however, the little animal squirmed and struggled so much that Mabel had all she could do to keep from dropping him.
“But what are you going to do with him?” queried Bettie.
“Oh, I’ll just slip around to the kitchen door—if I ever get that far—and ask Charles to take care of him.”
“Charles won’t be home,” said Sallie. “That’s the time of day he goes to the station to get the bread.”
“Then I’ll take him up to my room,” said Mabel, whose pet was now quite satisfied in her arms. “Perhaps you could bring up a cup of milk for him.”
“Mabel never comes home empty handed,” laughed Marjory. “And she isn’t particular what she brings, as long as it’s alive.”
“Won’t Isabelle be pleased?” laughed Maude.
“Lend him to me, Mabel. I’ll put him in Miss Woodruff’s bed.”
“No you won’t. I’m not going to have him abused.”
“Well, beware of Isabelle,” giggled Marjory.
Forewarned is forearmed. Mabel succeeded in slipping the pig into her bedroom closet without disturbing Isabelle who was busy writing what she was pleased to call “a poem.” She sent them, as she confided to Mabel, to her friend Clarence. Of course, when Isabelle had a pencil in her hand and that faraway look in her eye she was not likely to notice mere pigs.
Sallie had contrived a nursing bottle for the infant. Mabel, seated on the closet floor, succeeded in feeding her charge and presently made a nest for him by dumping the stockings out of her round mending basket; but to her surprise the pig, not being built that way, refused to curl. His tail curled beautifully but the rest of him wouldn’t. In no way, in fact, was he as accommodating an animal as a kitten or even a puppy.
“If he’d only just cuddle,” groaned Mabel, “he’d be so much more comfortable to live with.”
It was somewhere about midnight when Isabelle became aware of the pig. Mabel had been aware of him for a great many sleepless hours. Either he had had too much to eat or not enough. Perhaps he was only lonesome. At any rate he was quiet only when Mabel held him close to her own warm body and kept one or more of her fingers in his mouth. She had spent part of the night on the floor among the shoes; but the floor was hard and Mabel was sleepy; so finally she had crept into her own bed and taken the infant pig with her.
But nothing she could do seemed to please him. His squeals became louder and louder and more and more frequent. At last one of his very best squeals escaped from under the bedclothes.
“My goodness!” gasped Isabelle, suddenly sitting up in bed. “What’s that! Was that you, Mabel?”
“No,” returned Mabel, truthfully. “I didn’t speak.”
“It wasn’t a ‘speak’—it was more like a squeak.”
Piggy chose that moment to let out a smothered “Wee Wee!” in spite of Mabel’s restraining hand.
“Mabel, it is you. Are you sick?”
“I—I’m not sleeping very well,” offered Mabel, trying not to giggle. “I’m quite restless.”
“I thought I heard you eating things in the closet while I was writing. Perhaps you’ve made yourself sick.”
By this time Mabel was about helpless with laughter—it was so amusing to be taken for a pig. But just then her charge took a mean advantage of her. He squirmed suddenly, rolled out of bed and landed with a thump and an astonished grunt on the floor.
“My Uncle!” gasped Isabelle, leaping out of bed and switching on the light. “Are you killed!”
“For goodness’ sake keep still,” growled Mabel. “It isn’t me—it’s my pig!”