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diff --git a/26613-h/26613-h.htm b/26613-h/26613-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b64ad2a --- /dev/null +++ b/26613-h/26613-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6414 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ruth Fielding At College, by Alice B. Emerson. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ruth Fielding At College, by Alice B. Emerson + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Ruth Fielding At College + or The Missing Examination Papers + +Author: Alice B. Emerson + +Release Date: September 14, 2008 [EBook #26613] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE *** + + + + +Produced by David Edwards, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced +from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/title.jpg"><img src="images/title.jpg" alt=""/></a> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h1>Ruth Fielding At College</h1> + +<h4>OR</h4> + +<h2>THE MISSING EXAMINATION PAPERS</h2> + +<h2>BY ALICE B. EMERSON</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Author of "Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill," "Ruth Fielding on Cliff +Island," Etc</span>.</h3> + +<h4><i>ILLUSTRATED</i></h4> + + +<h4>NEW YORK<br /> +CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY<br /> +PUBLISHERS</h4> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1917, by</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Cupples & Leon Company</span></h4> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Ruth Fielding at College</span></h4> + +<h4>Printed in U. S. A.</h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/frontis.jpg"><img src="images/frontis.jpg" alt=""/></a> +</div> + +<h3>"ASHORE! PUT US ASHORE!" RUTH GASPED.</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> +<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I. <span class="smcap">Looking Collegeward</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II. <span class="smcap">Maggie</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III. <span class="smcap">Expectations</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV. <span class="smcap">First Impressions</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V. <span class="smcap">Getting Settled</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI. <span class="smcap">Miss Cullam's Trouble</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII. <span class="smcap">Fame Is Not Always an Asset</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII. <span class="smcap">The Stone Face</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX. <span class="smcap">Getting on</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X. <span class="smcap">A Tempest in a Teapot</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI. <span class="smcap">The One Rebel</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII. <span class="smcap">Ruth Is Not Satisfied</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII. <span class="smcap">The Girl in the Storm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV. <span class="smcap">"Oft in the Stilly Night"</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV. <span class="smcap">An Odd Adventure</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI. <span class="smcap">What Was in Rebecca's Trunk</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII. <span class="smcap">What Was in Rebecca's Heart</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII. <span class="smcap">Bearding the Lions</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX. <span class="smcap">A Deep, Dark Plot</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX. <span class="smcap">Two Surprises</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI. <span class="smcap">Many Things Happen</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII. <span class="smcap">Can It Be a Clue?</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII. <span class="smcap">The Squall</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV. <span class="smcap">Treasure Hunting</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV. <span class="smcap">The End of a Perfect Year</span></a><br /><br /> +<a href="#THE_RUTH_FIELDING_SERIES">THE RUTH FIELDING SERIES</a><br /> +<a href="#THE_BARTON_BOOKS_FOR_GIRLS">THE BARTON BOOKS FOR GIRLS</a><br /> +<a href="#THE_BETTY_GORDON_SERIES">THE BETTY GORDON SERIES</a><br /> + +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>LOOKING COLLEGEWARD</h3> + + +<p>"Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!"</p> + +<p>By no possibility could Aunt Alvirah Boggs have risen from her low +rocking chair in the Red Mill kitchen without murmuring this complaint.</p> + +<p>She was a little, hoop-backed woman, with crippled limbs; but she +possessed a countenance that was very much alive, nut-brown and +innumerably wrinkled though it was.</p> + +<p>She had been Mr. Jabez Potter's housekeeper at the Red Mill for more +than fifteen years, and if anybody knew the "moods and tenses" of the +miserly miller, it must have been Aunt Alvirah. She even professed to +know the miller's feelings toward his grand-niece, Ruth Fielding, better +than Ruth knew them herself.</p> + +<p>The little old woman was expecting the return of Ruth now, and she went +to the porch to see if she could spy her down the road, and thus be +warned in time to set the tea to draw. Ruth and her friends, who had +gone for a tramp in the September woods, would come in ravenous for tea +and cakes and bread-and-butter sandwiches.</p> + +<p>Aunt Alvirah looked out upon a very beautiful autumn landscape when she +opened the farmhouse door. The valley of the Lumano was attractive at +all times—in storm or sunshine. Now it was a riot of color, from the +deep crimson of the sumac to the pale amber of certain maple leaves +which fell in showers whenever the wanton breeze shook the boughs.</p> + +<p>"Here they come!" murmured Aunt Alvirah. "Here's my pretty!"</p> + +<p>She identified the trio striding up the roadway, distant as they were. +Ruth, her cheeks rosy, her hair flying, came on ahead, while the +black-haired and black-eyed twins, Helen and Tom Cameron, walked +hand-in-hand behind her. This was their final outing together in the +vicinity of the Red Mill for many months. Helen and Tom were always very +close companions, and although they had already been separated during +school terms, Tom had run over from Seven Oaks to see his sister at +Briarwood for almost every week-end.</p> + +<p>"No more of 'sich doin's now, old man," Helen said to him, smiling +rather tremulously. "And even when you get to Harvard next year, you +will not be allowed often at Ardmore. They say there is a sign 'No Boys +Allowed' stuck up beside every 'Keep Off the Grass' sign on the Ardmore +lawns."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense!" laughed Tom.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I only repeat what I've been told."</p> + +<p>"Well, Sis, you won't be entirely alone," Tom said kindly. "Ruth will be +with you. You and she will have your usual good times."</p> + +<p>"Of course. But <i>you'll</i> be awfully lonely, Tommy."</p> + +<p>"True enough," agreed Tom.</p> + +<p>Then Ruth's gay voice hailed them from the porch upon which she had +mounted yards ahead of them.</p> + +<p>"Come on, slow-pokes. Aunt Alvirah has put on the tea. I smell it!"</p> + +<p>Ruth Fielding did not possess her chum's measure of beauty. Helen was a +dainty, compelling brunette with flashing eyes—eyes she had already +learned to use to the undoing of what Ruth called "the youthful male of +the species."</p> + +<p>As for Ruth herself, she considered boys no mystery. She was fond of +Tom, for he was the first friend she had made in that long-ago time when +she arrived, a little girl and a stranger, at the Red Mill. Other boys +did not interest Ruth in the least.</p> + +<p>Without Helen's beauty, she was, nevertheless, a decidedly attractive +girl. Her figure was well rounded, her eyes shone, her hair was just +wavy enough to be pretty, and she was very, very much alive. If Ruth +Fielding took an interest in anything that thing, Tom declared, "went +with a bang!"</p> + +<p>She was positive, energetic, and usually finished anything that she +began. She had already done some things that few girls of her age could +have accomplished.</p> + +<p>The trio of friends trooped into Aunt Alvirah's clean and shining +kitchen.</p> + +<p>"Dear me! dear me!" murmured the little old woman, "I sha'n't have the +pleasure of your company for long. I'll miss my pretty," and she smiled +fondly at Ruth.</p> + +<p>"That's the only drawback about coming home from school," grumbled Tom, +looking really forlorn, even with his mouth full of Aunt Alvirah's pound +cake.</p> + +<p>"What's the drawback?" demanded his twin.</p> + +<p>"Going away again. Just think! We sha'n't see each other for so long."</p> + +<p>He was staring at Ruth, and Helen, with a roguish twinkle in her eye, +passed him her pocket-handkerchief—a wee and useless bit of +lace—saying:</p> + +<p>"Weep, if you must, Tommy; but get it over with. Ruth and I are not +gnashing <i>our</i> teeth about going away. Just to think! ARDMORE!"</p> + +<p>Nothing but capital letters would fully express the delight she put into +the name of the college she and Ruth were to attend.</p> + +<p>"Huh!" grunted Tom.</p> + +<p>Aunt Alvirah said: "It wouldn't matter, deary, if you was both goin' off +to be Queens of Sheby; it's the goin' away that hurts."</p> + +<p>Ruth had her arms about the little old woman and her own voice was +caressing if not lachrymose.</p> + +<p>"Don't take it so to heart, Aunt Alvirah. We shall not forget you. You +shall send us a box of goodies once in a while as you always do; and I +will write to you and to Uncle Jabez. Keep up your heart, dear."</p> + +<p>"Easy said, my pretty," sighed the old woman. "Not so easy follered out. +An' Jabe Potter is dreadful tryin' when you ain't here."</p> + +<p>"Poor Uncle Jabez," murmured Ruth.</p> + +<p>"Poor Aunt Alvirah, you'd better say!" exclaimed Helen, sharply, for she +had not the patience with the miserly miller that his niece possessed.</p> + +<p>At the moment the back door was pushed open. Helen jumped. She feared +that Uncle Jabez had overheard her criticism.</p> + +<p>But it was only Ben, the hired man, who thrust his face bashfully around +the edge of the door. The young people hailed him gaily, and Ruth +offered him a piece of cake.</p> + +<p>"Thank'e, Miss Ruth," Ben said. "I can't come in. Jest came to the shed +for the oars."</p> + +<p>"Is uncle going across the river in the punt?" asked Ruth.</p> + +<p>"No, Miss Ruth. There's a boat adrift on the river."</p> + +<p>"What kind of boat?" asked Tom, jumping up. "What d'you mean?"</p> + +<p>"She's gone adrift, Mr. Tom," said Ben. "Looks like she come from one o' +them camps upstream."</p> + +<p>"Oh! let's go and see!" cried Helen, likewise eager for something new.</p> + +<p>Neither of the Cameron twins ever remained in one position or were +interested solely in one thing for long.</p> + +<p>The young folk trooped out after Ben through the long, covered passage +to the rear door of the Red Mill. The water-wheel was turning and the +jar of the stones set every beam and plank in the structure to +trembling. The air was a haze of fine white particles. Uncle Jabez came +forward, as dusty and crusty an old miller as one might ever expect to +see.</p> + +<p>He was a tall, crabbed looking man, the dust of the mill seemingly so +ground into the lines of his face that it was grey all over and one +wondered if it could ever be washed clean again. He only nodded to his +niece and her friends, seizing the oars Ben had brought with the +observation:</p> + +<p>"Go 'tend to Gil Martin, Ben. He's waitin' for his flour. Where ye been +all this time? That boat'll drift by."</p> + +<p>Ben knew better than to reply as he hastened to the shipping door where +Mr. Martin waited with his wagon for the sacks of flour. The miller went +to the platform on the riverside, Ruth and her friends following him.</p> + +<p>"I see it!" cried Tom. "Can't be anybody in it for it's sailing +broadside."</p> + +<p>Uncle Jabez put the oars in the punt and began to untie the painter.</p> + +<p>"All the more reason we should get it," he said drily. "Salvage, ye +know."</p> + +<p>"You mustn't go alone, Uncle Jabez," Ruth said mildly.</p> + +<p>"Huh! why not?" snarled the old miller.</p> + +<p>"Something might happen. If Ben can't go, I will take an oar."</p> + +<p>He knew she was quite capable of handling the punt, even in the rapids, +so he merely growled his acquiescence. At that moment Ruth discovered +something.</p> + +<p>"Why! the boat isn't empty!" she cried.</p> + +<p>"You're right, Ruth! I see something in it," said Tom.</p> + +<p>Uncle Jabez straightened up, holding the painter doubtfully.</p> + +<p>"Aw, well," he grunted. "If there's somebody in it——"</p> + +<p>He saw no reason for going after the drifting boat if it were manned. He +could not claim the boat or claim salvage for it under such +circumstances.</p> + +<p>But the strange boat was drifting toward the rapids of the Lumano that +began just below the mill. In the present state of the river this "white +water," as lumbermen call it, was dangerous.</p> + +<p>"Why, how foolish!" Helen cried. "Whoever is in that boat is lying in +the bottom of it."</p> + +<p>"And drifting right toward the middle of the river!" added her twin.</p> + +<p>"Hurry up, Uncle Jabez!" urged Ruth. "We must go out there."</p> + +<p>"What fur, I'd like to know?" demanded the miller sharply. "We ain't +hired ter go out an' wake up every reckless fule that goes driftin' by."</p> + +<p>"Of course not. But maybe he's not asleep," Ruth said quickly. "Maybe +he's hurt. Maybe he has fainted. Why, a dozen things might have +happened!"</p> + +<p>"An' a dozen things might <i>not</i> have happened," said old Jabez Potter, +coolly retying the painter.</p> + +<p>"Uncle! we mustn't do that!" cried his niece. "We must go out in the +punt and make sure all is right with that boat."</p> + +<p>"Who says so?" demanded the miller.</p> + +<p>"Of course we must. I'll go with you. Come, do! There is somebody in +danger."</p> + +<p>Ruth Fielding, as she spoke, leaped into the punt. Tom would have been +glad to go with her, but she had motioned him back before he could +speak. She was ashamed to have the miller so display the mean side of +his nature before her friends.</p> + +<p>Grumblingly he climbed into the heavy boat after her. Tom cast off and +Ruth pushed the boat's nose upstream, then settled herself to one of the +oars while Uncle Jabez took the other.</p> + +<p>"Huh! they ain't anything in it for us," grumbled Mr. Potter as the punt +slanted toward mid-stream.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>MAGGIE</h3> + + +<p>Ruth Fielding knew very well the treacherous current of the Lumano. She +saw that the drifting boat with its single occupant was very near to the +point where the fierce pull of the mid-stream current would seize it.</p> + +<p>So she rowed her best and having the stroke oar, Uncle Jabez was obliged +to pull <i>his</i> best to keep up with her.</p> + +<p>"Huh!" he snorted, "it ain't so pertic'lar, is it, Niece Ruth? That +feller——"</p> + +<p>She made no reply, but in a few minutes they were near enough to the +drifting boat for Ruth to glance over her shoulder and see into it. At +once she uttered a little cry of pity.</p> + +<p>"What now?" gruffly demanded Uncle Jabez.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Uncle! It's a girl!" Ruth gasped.</p> + +<p>"A gal! <i>Another gal?</i>" exclaimed the old miller. "I swanny! The Red +Mill is allus littered up with gals when you're to hum."</p> + +<p>This was a favorite complaint of his; but he pulled more vigorously, +nevertheless, and the punt was quickly beside the drifting boat.</p> + +<p>A girl in very commonplace garments—although she was not at all a +commonplace looking girl—lay in the bottom of the boat. Her eyes were +closed and she was very pale.</p> + +<p>"She's fainted," Ruth whispered.</p> + +<p>"Who in 'tarnation let a gal like that go out in a boat alone, and +without airy oar?" demanded Uncle Jabez, crossly. "Here! hold steady. +I'll take that painter and 'tach it to the boat. We'll tow her in. But +lemme tell ye," added Uncle Jabez, decidedly, "somebody's got ter pay me +fur my time, or else they don't git the boat back. She seems to be all +right."</p> + +<p>"Why, she isn't conscious!" cried Ruth.</p> + +<p>"Huh!" grunted Uncle Jabez, "I mean the boat, not the gal."</p> + +<p>Ruth always suspected that Uncle Jabez Potter made a pretense of being +really worse than he was. When a little girl she had been almost afraid +of her cross-grained relative—the only relative she had in the world.</p> + +<p>But there were times when the ugly crust of the old man's character was +rubbed off and his niece believed she saw the true gold beneath. She was +frequently afraid that others would hear and not understand him. Now +that she was financially independent of Uncle Jabez Ruth was not so +sensitive for herself.</p> + +<p>They towed the boat back to the mill landing. Tom and Ben carried the +strange girl, still unconscious into the Red Mill farmhouse, and +bustling little Aunt Alvirah had her put at once to bed.</p> + +<p>"Shall I hustle right over to Cheslow for the doctor?" Tom asked.</p> + +<p>"Who's goin' to pay him?" growled Uncle Jabez, who heard this.</p> + +<p>"Don't let that worry you, Mr. Potter," said the youth, his black eyes +flashing. "If I hire a doctor I always pay him."</p> + +<p>"It's a good thing to have that repertation," Uncle Jabez said drily. +"One should pay the debts he contracts."</p> + +<p>But Aunt Alvirah scoffed at the need of a doctor.</p> + +<p>"The gal's only fainted. Scare't it's likely, findin' herself adrift in +that boat. You needn't trouble yourself about it, Jabez."</p> + +<p>Thus reassured the miller went back to examine the boat. Although it was +somewhat marred, it was not damaged, and Uncle Jabez was satisfied that +if nobody claimed the boat he would be amply repaid for his trouble.</p> + +<p>Naturally, the two girls fluttered about the stranger a good deal when +Aunt Alvirah had brought her out of her faint. Ruth was particularly +attracted by "Maggie" as the stranger announced her name to be.</p> + +<p>"I was working at one of those summer-folks' camps up the river. Mr. +Bender's, it was," she explained to Ruth, later. "But all the folks went +last night, and this morning I was going across the river with my +bag—oh, did you find my bag, Miss?"</p> + +<p>"Surely," Ruth laughed. "It is here, beside your bed."</p> + +<p>"Oh, thank you," said the girl. "Mr. Bender paid me last night. One of +the men was to take me across the river, and I sat down and waited, and +nobody came, and by and by I fell into a nap and when I woke up I was +out in the river, all alone. My! I was frightened."</p> + +<p>"Then you have no reason for going back to the camp?" asked Ruth, +thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"No—Miss. I'm through up there for the season. I'll look for another +situation—I—I mean job," she added stammeringly.</p> + +<p>"We will telephone up the river and tell them you are all right," Ruth +said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, thank you—Miss."</p> + +<p>Ruth asked her several other questions, and although Maggie was +reserved, her answers were satisfactory.</p> + +<p>"But what's goin' to become of the gal?" Uncle Jabez asked that evening +after supper, when he and his niece were in the farmhouse kitchen alone.</p> + +<p>Aunt Alvirah had carried tea and toast in to the patient and was sitting +by her.</p> + +<p>The girl of the Red Mill thought Maggie did not seem like the usual +"hired help" whom she had seen. She seemed much more refined than one +might expect a girl to be of the class to which she claimed to belong.</p> + +<p>Ruth looked across the table at her cross-grained old relative and made +no direct reply to his question. She was very sure that, after all, he +would be kind to the strange girl if Maggie actually needed to be +helped. But Ruth had an idea that Maggie was quite capable of helping +herself.</p> + +<p>"Uncle Jabez," the girl of the Red Mill said to the old man, softly, "do +you know something?"</p> + +<p>"Huh?" grunted Uncle Jabez. "I know a hull lot more than you young +sprigs gimme credit for knowin'."</p> + +<p>"Oh! I didn't mean it that way," and Ruth laughed cheerily at him. "I +mean that I have discovered something, and I wondered if you had +discovered the same thing?"</p> + +<p>"Out with it, Niece Ruth," he ordered, eyeing her curiously. "I'll tell +ye if it's anything I already know."</p> + +<p>"Well, Aunt Alvirah is growing old."</p> + +<p>"Ye don't say!" snapped the miller. "And who ain't, I'd like to know?"</p> + +<p>"Her rheumatism is much worse, and it will soon be winter."</p> + +<p>"Say! what air ye tryin' to do?" he demanded. "Tellin' me these here +puffictly obvious things! Of course she's gittin' older; and of course +her rheumatiz is bound to grow wuss. Doctors ain't never yet found +nothin' to cure rheumatiz. And winter us'ally follers fall—even in this +here tarnation climate."</p> + +<p>"Well, but the combination is going to be very bad for Aunt Alvirah," +Ruth said gently, determined to pursue her idea to the finish, no matter +how cross he appeared to be.</p> + +<p>"Wal, is it <i>my</i> fault?" asked Uncle Jabez.</p> + +<p>"It's nobody's fault," Ruth told him, shaking her head, and very +serious. "But it's Aunt Alvirah's misfortune."</p> + +<p>"Huh!"</p> + +<p>"And we must do something about it."</p> + +<p>"Huh! Must we? What, I'd like to have ye tell me?" said the old miller, +eyeing Ruth much as one strange dog might another that he suspected was +after his best marrow bone.</p> + +<p>"We must get somebody to help her do the work while I am at college," +Ruth said firmly.</p> + +<p>The dull red flooded into Uncle Jabez's cheeks, and for once gave him a +little color. His narrow eyes sparkled, too.</p> + +<p>"There's one thing I've allus said, Niece Ruth," he declared hotly. "Ye +air a great one for spending other folks' money."</p> + +<p>It was Ruth's turn to flush now, and although she might not possess what +Aunt Alvirah called "the Potter economical streak," she did own to a +spark of the Potter temper. Ruth Fielding was not namby-pamby, although +she was far from quarrelsome.</p> + +<p>"Uncle Jabez," she returned rather tartly, "have I been spending much of +<i>your</i> money lately?"</p> + +<p>"No," he growled. "But ye ain't l'arnt how to take proper keer of yer +own—trapsin' 'round the country the way you do."</p> + +<p>She laughed then. "I'm getting knowledge. Some of it comes high, I have +found; but it will all help me <i>live</i>."</p> + +<p>"Huh! I've lived without that brand of l'arnin'," grunted Uncle Jabez.</p> + +<p>Ruth looked at him amusedly. She was tempted to tell him that he had not +lived, only existed. But she was not impudent, and merely went on to +say:</p> + +<p>"Aunt Alvirah is getting too old to do all the work here——"</p> + +<p>"I send Ben in to help her some when she's alone," said the miller.</p> + +<p>"And by so doing put extra work on poor Ben," Ruth told him, decidedly. +"No, Aunt Alvirah must have another woman around, or a girl."</p> + +<p>"Where ye goin' to find the gal?" snapped the miller. "Work gals don't +like to stay in the country."</p> + +<p>"She's found, I believe," Ruth told him.</p> + +<p>"Huh?"</p> + +<p>"This Maggie we just got out of the river. She has no job, she says, and +she wants one. I believe she'll stay."</p> + +<p>"Who's goin' to pay her wages?" demanded Uncle Jabez, getting back to +"first principles" again.</p> + +<p>"I'll pay the girl's wages, Uncle Jabez," Ruth said seriously. "But you +must feed her. And she must be fed well, too. I can see that part of her +trouble is malnutrition."</p> + +<p>"Huh? Has she got some ketchin' disease?" Uncle Jabez demanded.</p> + +<p>"It isn't contagious," Ruth replied drily. "But unless she is well fed +she cannot be cured of it."</p> + +<p>"Wal, there's plenty of milk and eggs," the miller said.</p> + +<p>"But you must not hide the key of the meat-house, Uncle," and now Ruth +laughed outright at him. "Four people at table means a depletion of your +smoked meat and a dipping occasionally into the corned-beef barrel."</p> + +<p>"Wal——"</p> + +<p>"Now, if I pay the girl's wages, you must supply the food," his niece +said, firmly, "Otherwise, Aunt Alvirah will go without help, and then +she will break down, and <i>then</i>——"</p> + +<p>"Huh!" grunted the miller. "I couldn't let her go back to the poorfarm, +I s'pose?"</p> + +<p>He actually made it a question; but Ruth could not see his face, for he +had turned aside.</p> + +<p>"No. She could not return to the poorhouse—after fifteen years!" +exclaimed the girl. "Do you know what <i>I</i> should do?" and she asked the +question warmly.</p> + +<p>"Somethin' fullish, I allow."</p> + +<p>"I should take her to Ardmore with me, and find a tiny cottage for her, +and maybe she would keep house for Helen and me."</p> + +<p>"That'd be jest like ye, Niece Ruth," he responded coolly. "You think +you have all the money in the world. That's because ye didn't aim what +ye got—it was give to ye."</p> + +<p>The statement was in large part true, and for the moment Ruth's lips +were closed. Tears stood in her eyes, too. She realized that she could +not be independent of the old miller had not chance and kind-hearted and +grateful Mrs. Rachel Parsons given her the bulk of the amount now +deposited in her name in the bank.</p> + +<p>Ruth Fielding's circumstances had been very different when she had first +come to Cheslow and the Red Mill. Then she was a little, homeless, +orphan girl who was "taken in out of charity" by Uncle Jabez. And very +keenly and bitterly had she been made to feel during those first few +months her dependence upon the crabbed old miller.</p> + +<p>The introductory volume of this series, "Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill, +or, Jacob Parloe's Secret," details in full the little girl's trials and +triumphs under these unfortunate conditions—how she makes friends, +smooths over difficulties, and in a measure wins old Uncle Jabez's +approval. The miller was a very honest man and always paid his debts. +Because of something Ruth did for him he felt it to be his duty to pay +her first year's tuition at boarding school, where she went with her new +friend, Helen Cameron. In "Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall," the Red +Mill girl really begins her school career, and begins, too, to satisfy +that inbred longing for independence which was so strong a part of her +character.</p> + +<p>In succeeding volumes of the "Ruth Fielding Series," we follow Ruth's +adventures in Snow Camp, a winter lodge in the Adirondack wilderness; at +Lighthouse Point, the summer home of a girl friend on the Atlantic +coast; at Silver Ranch, in Montana; at Cliff Island; at Sunrise Farm; +with the Gypsies, which was a very important adventure, indeed, for Ruth +Fielding. In this eighth story Ruth was able to recover for Mrs. Rachel +Parsons, an aunt of one of her school friends, a very valuable pearl +necklace, and as a reward of five thousand dollars had been offered for +the recovery of the necklace, the entire sum came to Ruth. This money +made Ruth financially independent of Uncle Jabez.</p> + +<p>The ninth volume of the series, entitled, "Ruth Fielding in Moving +Pictures; or, Helping the Dormitory Fund," shows Ruth and her chums +engaged in film production. Ruth discovered that she could write a good +scenario—a very good scenario, indeed. Mr. Hammond, president of the +Alectrion Film Corporation, encouraged her to write others. When the +West Dormitory of Briarwood Hall was burned and it was discovered that +there had been no insurance on the building, the girls determined to do +all in their power to rebuild the structure.</p> + +<p>Ruth was inspired to write a scenario, a five-reel drama of schoolgirl +life, and Mr. Hammond produced it, Ruth's share of the profits going +toward the building fund. "The Heart of a Schoolgirl" was not only +locally famous, but was shown all over the country and was even now, +after six months, paying the final construction bills of the West +Dormitory, at Briarwood.</p> + +<p>In this ninth volume of the series, Ruth and Helen and many of their +chums graduated from Briarwood Hall. Immediately after the graduation +the girl of the Red Mill and Helen Cameron were taken south by Nettie +Parsons and her Aunt Rachel to visit the Merredith plantation in South +Carolina. Their adventures were fully related in the story immediately +preceding the present narrative, the tenth of the "Ruth Fielding +Series," entitled, "Ruth Fielding Down in Dixie; or, Great Times in the +Land of Cotton."</p> + +<p>Home again, after that delightful journey, Ruth had spent most of the +remaining weeks of her vacation quietly at the Red Mill. She was engaged +upon another scenario for Mr. Hammond, in which the beautiful old mill +on the Lumano would figure largely. She also had had many preparations +to make for her freshman year at Ardmore.</p> + +<p>Ruth and Helen were quite "young ladies" now, so Tom scoffingly said. +And going to college was quite another thing from looking forward to a +term at a preparatory school. Nevertheless, Ruth had found plenty of +time to help Aunt Alvirah during the past few weeks.</p> + +<p>She had noted how much feebler the old woman was becoming. Therefore, +she was determined to win Uncle Jabez to her plan of securing help in +the Red Mill kitchen. The coming of the girl, Maggie, though a strange +coincidence, Ruth looked upon as providential. She urged Uncle Jabez to +agree to her proposal, and the very next morning she sounded Maggie upon +the subject. The strange girl was sitting up, but Aunt Alvirah would not +hear to her doing anything as yet. Ruth found Maggie in the +sitting-room, engaged in looking at the Ardmore Year Book which Ruth had +left upon the sitting-room table.</p> + +<p>"Pretty landscapes about the college, aren't they?" Ruth suggested.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes—Miss. Very pretty," agreed Maggie.</p> + +<p>"That is where I am going to college," Ruth explained. "I enter as a +freshman next week."</p> + +<p>"Is that so—Miss?" hesitated Maggie. Her heretofore colorless face +flushed warmly. "I've heard of that—that place," she added.</p> + +<p>"Indeed, have you?"</p> + +<p>Maggie was looking at the photograph of Lake Remona, with a part of +Bliss Island at one side. She continued to stare at the picture while +Ruth put before her the suggestion of work at the Red Mill.</p> + +<p>"Oh, of course, Miss Fielding, I'd be glad of the work. And you're very +liberal. But you don't know anything about me."</p> + +<p>"No. And I shouldn't know much more about you if you brought a dozen +recommendations," laughed Ruth.</p> + +<p>"I suppose not—Miss." It seemed hard for the girl to get out that +"Miss," and Ruth, who was keenly observant, wondered if she really had +been accustomed to using it.</p> + +<p>They talked it over and finally reached an agreement. Aunt Alvirah was +sweetly grateful to Ruth, knowing full well that there must have been a +"battle royal" between the miller and his niece before the former had +agreed to the new arrangement.</p> + +<p>Ruth was quite sure that Maggie was a nice girl, even if she was queer. +At least, she gave deference to the quaint little old housekeeper, and +seemed to like Aunt Alvirah very much. And who would not love the woman, +who was everybody's aunt but nobody's relative?</p> + +<p>Once or twice Ruth found Maggie poring over the Year Book of Ardmore +College, rather an odd interest for a girl of her class. But Maggie was +rather an odd girl anyway, and Ruth forgot the matter in her final +preparations for departure.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>EXPECTATIONS</h3> + + +<p>"I expect she'll be a haughty, stuck-up thing," declared Edith Phelps, +with vigor.</p> + +<p>"'Just like <i>that</i>,'" drawled May MacGreggor. "We should worry about the +famous authoress of canned drama! A budding lady hack writer, I fancy."</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear me, no!" cried Edith. "Didn't you see 'The Heart of a +Schoolgirl' she wrote? Why, it was a good photo-play, I assure you."</p> + +<p>"And put out by the Alectrion Film Corporation," joined in another of +the group of girls standing upon the wide porch of Dare Hall, one of the +four large dormitories of Ardmore College.</p> + +<p>The college buildings were set most artistically upon the slope of +College Hill, each building facing sparkling Lake Remona. Save the +boathouse and the bathing pavilions, Dare and Dorrance Halls at the east +side of the grounds, and Hoskin and Hemmingway Halls at the west side, +were the structures nearest to the lake.</p> + +<p>Farther to the east an open grove intervened between the dormitories and +the meadows along the Remona River where bog hay was cut, and which were +sometimes flooded in the freshet season.</p> + +<p>To the west the lake extended as far as the girls on the porch could +see, a part of its sparkling surface being hidden by the green and hilly +bulk of Bliss Island. The shaded green lawns of the campus between Dare +and Hoskin Halls were crossed by winding paths.</p> + +<p>A fleshy girl who was near the group but not of it, had been viewing +this lovely landscape with pleasure. Now she frankly listened to the +chatter of the "inquisitors."</p> + +<p>"Well," Edith Phelps insisted, "this Ruth Fielding was so petted at that +backwoods' school where she has been that I suppose there will be no +living in the same house with her."</p> + +<p>Edith was one of the older sophomores—quite old, indeed, to the eyes of +the plump girl who was listening. But the latter smiled quietly, +nevertheless, as she listened to the sophomore's speech.</p> + +<p>"We shall have to take her down a peg or two, of course. It's bad enough +to have the place littered up with a lot of freshies——"</p> + +<p>"Just as we littered it up last year at this time, Edie," suggested May, +with a chuckle.</p> + +<p>"Well," Edith said, laughing, "if I don't put this Ruth Fielding, the +authoress, in her place in a hurry, it won't be because I sha'n't try."</p> + +<p>"Have a care, dearie," admonished one quiet girl who had not spoken +before. "Remember the warning we had at commencement."</p> + +<p>"About what?" demanded two or three.</p> + +<p>"About that Rolff girl, you know," said the thoughtful girl.</p> + +<p>"Oh! I know what you mean," Edith said. "But that was a warning to the +sororities."</p> + +<p>"To everybody," put in May.</p> + +<p>"At any rate," Dora Parton said, "Dr. Milroth forbade anything in the +line of hazing."</p> + +<p>"Pooh!" said Edith. "Who mentioned hazing? That's old-fashioned. We're +too ladylike at Ardmore, I should hope, to <i>haze</i>—my!"</p> + +<p>"'My heye, blokey!'" drawled May.</p> + +<p>"You are positively coarse, Miss MacGreggor," Dora said, severely.</p> + +<p>"And Edie is so awfully emphatic," laughed the Scotch girl. "But she +will have to take it out in threatenings, I fear. We can't haze this +Fielding chit, and that's all there is to it."</p> + +<p>"Positively," said the quiet girl, "that was a terrible thing they did +to Margaret Rolff. She was a nervous girl, anyway. Do you remember her, +May?"</p> + +<p>"Of course. And I remember being jealous because she was chosen by the +Kappa Alpha as a candidate. Glad <i>I</i> wasn't one if they put all their +new members through the same rigmarole."</p> + +<p>"That is irreverent!" gasped Edith. "The Kappa Alpha!"</p> + +<p>"I see Dr. Milroth took them down all right, all right!" remarked +another of the group. "And now none of the sororities can solicit +members among either the sophs or the freshies."</p> + +<p>"And it's a shame!" cried Edith. "The sorority girls have such fun."</p> + +<p>"Half murdering innocents—yes," drawled May. "That Margaret Rolff was +just about scared out of her wits, they say. They found her wandering +about Bliss Island——"</p> + +<p>"Sh! We're not to talk of it," advised Edith, with a glance at the fat +girl in the background who, although taking no part in the discussion, +was very much amused, especially every time Ruth Fielding's name was +brought up.</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know why we shouldn't speak of it," said Dora Parton, who +was likewise a sophomore. "The whole college knew it at the time. When +Margaret Rolff left they discovered that the beautiful silver vase was +gone, too, from the library——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, hush!" exclaimed May MacGreggor, sharply.</p> + +<p>"Won't hush—so now!" said the other girl, smartly, making a face at the +Scotch lassie. "Didn't Miss Cullam go wailing all over the college about +it?"</p> + +<p>"That's so," Edith agreed. "You'd have thought it was her vase that had +been stolen."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe the vase was stolen at all," May said. "It was mixed up +in that initiation and lost. I know that the Kappa Alpha girls are +raising a fund to pay for it."</p> + +<p>"Pay for it!" scoffed some one. "Why, they couldn't do that in a +thousand years. That was an Egyptian curio—very old and very valuable. +Pay for it, indeed! Those Kappa Alphas, as well as the other sororities, +are paying for their fun in another way."</p> + +<p>"But, anyway," said the quiet girl, "it was a terrible experience for +Miss Rolff."</p> + +<p>"Unless she 'put it on' and got away with the loot herself," said Edith.</p> + +<p>"Oh, scissors! <i>now</i> who's coarse?" demanded May MacGreggor.</p> + +<p>But the conversation came back to the expected Ruth Fielding. These +girls had all arrived at Ardmore several days in advance of the opening +of the semester. Indeed, it is always advisable for freshmen, +especially, to be on hand at least two days before the opening, for +there is much preparation for newcomers.</p> + +<p>The fleshy girl who had thus far taken no part in the conversation +recorded, save to be amused by it, had already been on the ground long +enough to know her way about. But she was not yet acquainted with any of +her classmates or with the sophomores.</p> + +<p>If she knew Ruth Fielding, she said nothing about it when Edith Phelps +began to discuss the girl of the Red Mill again.</p> + +<p>"Miss Cullam spoke to me about this Fielding. It seems she has an +acquaintance who teaches at that backwoods' school the child went +to——"</p> + +<p>"Briarwood a backwoods' school!" said May. "Not much!"</p> + +<p>"Well, it's somewhere up in New York State among the yaps," declared +Edith. "And Cullam's friend wrote her that Fielding is a wonder. Dear +me! how I <i>do</i> abominate wonders."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps we are maligning the girl," said Dora. "Perhaps Ruth Fielding +is quite modest."</p> + +<p>"What? After writing a moving picture drama? Is there anything modest +about the motion picture business in <i>any</i> of its branches?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear me, Edie!" cried one of her listeners, "you're dreadful."</p> + +<p>"I presume this canned drama authoress," pursued Edith, "will have +ink-stains on her fingers and her hair will be eternally flying about +her careworn features. Well! and what are <i>you</i> laughing at?" she +suddenly and tartly demanded of the plump girl in the background.</p> + +<p>"At you," chuckled the stranger.</p> + +<p>"Am I so funny to look at?"</p> + +<p>"No. But you are the funniest-talking girl I ever listened to. Let me +laugh, won't you?"</p> + +<p>Before this observation could be more particularly inquired into, some +one shouted:</p> + +<p>"Oh, look who's here! And in style, bless us!"</p> + +<p>"And see the freight! Excess baggage, for a fact," May MacGreggor said, +under her breath. "Who <i>can</i> she be?"</p> + +<p>"The Queen of Sheba in all her glory had nothing on this lady," cried +Edith with conviction.</p> + +<p>It was not often that any of the Ardmore girls, and especially a +freshman, arrived during the opening week of the term in a private +equipage. This car that came chugging down the hill to the entrance of +Dare Hall was a very fine touring automobile. The girl in the tonneau, +barricaded with a huge trunk and several bags, besides a huge leather +hat-box perched beside the chauffeur, was very gaily appareled as well.</p> + +<p>"Goodness! look at the labels on that trunk," whispered Dora Parton. +"Why, that girl must have been all over Europe."</p> + +<p>"The trunk has, at any rate," chuckled May.</p> + +<p>"Hist!" now came from the excited Edith Phelps. "See the initials, 'R. +F.' What did I tell you? It is that Fielding girl!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, my aunt!" groaned the plump girl in the background, and she +actually had to stuff her handkerchief in her mouth to keep from +laughing outright again.</p> + +<p>The car had halted and the chauffeur got down promptly, for he had to +remove some of the "excess baggage" before the girl in the tonneau could +alight.</p> + +<p>"I guess she must think she belongs here," whispered Dora.</p> + +<p>"More likely she thinks she owns the whole place," snapped Edith, who +had evidently made up her mind not to like the new girl whose baggage +was marked "R. F."</p> + +<p>The girl got out and shook out her draperies. A close inspection would +have revealed the fact that, although dressed in the very height of +fashion (whatever <i>that</i> may mean), the materials of which the +stranger's costume were made were rather cheap.</p> + +<p>"This is Dare Hall, isn't it?" she asked the group of girls above her on +the porch. "I suppose there is a porter to help—er—the man with my +baggage?"</p> + +<p>"It is a rule of the college," said Edith, promptly, "that each girl +shall carry her own baggage to her room. No male person is allowed +within the dormitory building."</p> + +<p>There was a chorused, if whispered, "Oh!" from the other girls, and the +newcomer looked at Edith, suspiciously.</p> + +<p>"I guess you are spoofing me, aren't you?" she inquired.</p> + +<p>"Help! help!" murmured May MacGreggor. "That's the very latest English +slang."</p> + +<p>"She's brought it direct from 'dear ol' Lunnon'," gasped one of the +other sophomores.</p> + +<p>"Dear me!" said Edith, addressing her friends, "wouldn't it be nice to +have a 'close up' taken of that heap of luggage? It really needs a +camera man and a director to make this arrival a success."</p> + +<p>The girl who had just come looked very much puzzled. The chauffeur +seemed eager to be gone.</p> + +<p>"If I can't help take in the boxes, Miss, I might as well be going," he +said to the new arrival.</p> + +<p>"Very well," she rejoined, stiffly, and opening her purse gave him a +bill. He lifted his cap, entered the car, touched the starter and in a +moment the car whisked away.</p> + +<p>"I declare!" said May MacGreggor, "she looks just like a castaway on the +shore of a desert island, with all the salvage she has been able to +recover from the wreck."</p> + +<p>And perhaps the mysterious R. F. felt a good deal that way.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>FIRST IMPRESSIONS</h3> + + +<p>Greenburg was the station on the N. Y. F. & B. Railroad nearest to +Ardmore College. It was a small city of some thirty or forty thousand +inhabitants. The people, not alone in the city but in the surrounding +country, were a rather wealthy class. Ardmore was a mile from the +outskirts of the town.</p> + +<p>Ruth Fielding and Helen Cameron, her chum, had arrived with other girls +bound for the college on the noon train. Of course, the chums knew none +of their fellow pupils by name, but it was easily seen which of those +alighting from the train were bound for Ardmore.</p> + +<p>There were two large auto-stages in waiting, and Ruth and Helen followed +the crowd of girls briskly getting aboard the buses. As they saw other +girls do, the two chums from Cheslow gave their trunk checks to a man on +the platform, but they clung to their hand-baggage.</p> + +<p>"Such a nice looking lot of girls," murmured Helen in Ruth's ear. "It's +fine! I'm sure we shall have a delightful time at college, Ruthie."</p> + +<p>"And some hard work," observed Ruth, laughing, "if we expect to keep up +with them. There are no dunces in this crowd, my dear."</p> + +<p>"Goodness, no!" agreed her friend. "They all look as sharp as needles."</p> + +<p>There were girls of all the classes at the station, as was easily seen. +Ruth and Helen chanced to get into a seat with two of the seniors, who +seemed most awfully sophisticated to the recent graduates of Briarwood +Hall.</p> + +<p>"You are just entering, are you not—you and your friend?" asked the +nearest senior of Ruth.</p> + +<p>"Yes," admitted the girl of the Red Mill, feeling and looking very shy.</p> + +<p>The young women smiled quietly, saying:</p> + +<p>"I am Miss Dexter, and am beginning my senior year. I am glad to be the +first to welcome you to Ardmore."</p> + +<p>"Thank you so much!" Ruth said, recovering her self-possession. Then she +told Miss Dexter her own name and introduced Helen.</p> + +<p>"You girls have drawn your room numbers, I presume?"</p> + +<p>"They were drawn for us," Ruth said. "We are to be in Dare Hall and hope +to have adjoining rooms."</p> + +<p>"That is nice," said Miss Dexter. "It is so much pleasanter when two +friends enter together. I am at Hoskin Hall myself. I shall be glad to +have you two freshmen look me up when you are once settled."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," Ruth said again, and Helen found her voice to ask:</p> + +<p>"Are all the seniors in Hoskin Hall, and all the freshmen at Dare Hall?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no. There are members of each class in all four of the +dormitories," Miss Dexter explained.</p> + +<p>"I suppose there will be much for us to learn," sighed Ruth. "It is +different from a boarding school."</p> + +<p>"Do you both come from a boarding school?" asked their new acquaintance.</p> + +<p>"We are graduates of Briarwood Hall," Helen said, with pride.</p> + +<p>"Oh, indeed?" Miss Dexter looked sharply at Ruth again. "Did you say +your name was Ruth Fielding?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Miss Dexter."</p> + +<p>"Why, you must be the girl who wrote a picture play to help build a +dormitory for your school!" exclaimed the senior. "Really, how nice."</p> + +<p>"There, Ruth!" said Helen, teasingly, "see what it is to be famous."</p> + +<p>"I—I hope my reputation will not be held against me," Ruth said, +laughing. "Let me tell you, Miss Dexter, we all at Briarwood helped to +swell that dormitory fund."</p> + +<p>"I fancy so," said the senior. "But all of your schoolmates could not +have written a scenario which would have been approved by the Alectrion +Film Corporation."</p> + +<p>"I should say not!" cried Helen, warmly. "And it was a great picture, +too."</p> + +<p>"It was clever, indeed," agreed Miss Dexter. "I saw it on the screen."</p> + +<p>Miss Dexter introduced the girl at the other end of the seat—another +senior, Miss Purvis. The two entering freshmen felt flattered—how could +they help it? They had expected, as freshmen, to be quite haughtily +ignored by the seniors and juniors.</p> + +<p>But there were other matters to interest Ruth and Helen as the auto-bus +rolled out of the city. The way was very pleasant; there were beautiful +homes in the suburbs of Greenburg. And after they were passed, there +were lovely fields and groves on either hand. The chums thought they had +seldom seen more attractive country, although they had traveled more +than most girls of their age.</p> + +<p>The road over which the auto-bus rolled was wide and well oiled—a +splendid automobile track. But only one private equipage passed them on +the ride to Ardmore. That car came along, going the same way as +themselves, just as they reached the first of the row of faculty +dwellings.</p> + +<p>There was but one passenger in the car—a girl; and she was packed +around with baggage in a most surprising way.</p> + +<p>"Oh!" gasped Helen, in Ruth's ear, "I guess there goes one of the real +fancy girls—the kind that sets the pace at college."</p> + +<p>Ruth noticed that Miss Dexter and Miss Purvis craned their necks to see +the car and the girl, and she ventured to ask who she was.</p> + +<p>"I can't tell you," Miss Dexter said briskly. "I never saw her before."</p> + +<p>"Oh! Perhaps, then, she isn't going to the college."</p> + +<p>"Yes; she must be. This road goes nowhere else. But she is a freshman, +of course."</p> + +<p>"An eccentric, I fancy," drawled Miss Purvis. "You must know that each +freshman class is bound to have numbered with it some most surprising +individuals. <i>Rarae aves</i>, as it were."</p> + +<p>Miss Dexter laughed. "But the corners are soon rubbed off and their +peculiarities fade into the background. When I was a freshman, there +entered a woman over fifty, with perfectly white hair. She was a <i>dear</i>; +but, of course, she was an anomaly at college."</p> + +<p>"My!" exclaimed Helen. "What did she want to go to college for?"</p> + +<p>"The poor thing had always wanted to go to college. When she was young +there were few women's colleges. And she had a big family to help, and +finally a bedridden sister to care for. So she remained faithful to her +home duties, but each year kept up with the graduating class of a local +preparatory school. She was really a very well educated and bright +woman; only peculiar."</p> + +<p>"And what happened when she came to Ardmore?" asked Ruth, interested, +"is she still here?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no. She remained only a short time. She found, she said, that her +mind was not nimble enough, at her age, to keep up with the classes. +Which was very probably true, you know. Unless one is constantly engaged +in hard mental labor, one's mind must get into ruts by the time one is +fifty. But she was very lovely, and quite popular—while she lasted."</p> + +<p>Helen was more interested just then in the row of cottages occupied by +the members of the faculty, and here strung along the left side of the +highway. They were pretty houses, set in pretty grounds.</p> + +<p>"Oh, look, Helen!" cried Ruth, suddenly.</p> + +<p>"The lake!" responded Helen.</p> + +<p>The dancing blue waters of Lake Remona were visible for a minute between +two of the houses. Ruth, too, caught a glimpse of the small island which +raised its hilly head in the middle of the lake.</p> + +<p>"Is that Bliss Island?" she inquired of Miss Dexter.</p> + +<p>"Yes. You can see it from here. That doesn't belong to the college."</p> + +<p>"No?" said Ruth, in surprise: "But, of course, the girls can go there?"</p> + +<p>"It is 'No Man's Land,' I believe. Belongs to none of the estates +surrounding the lake. We go there—yes," Miss Dexter told her. "The +Stone Face is there."</p> + +<p>"What is that, please?" asked Ruth, interested. "What is the Stone +Face?"</p> + +<p>"A landmark, Miss Fielding. That Stone Face was quite an important spot +last May—wasn't it, Purvis?" the senior asked the other girl.</p> + +<p>"Oh, goodness me, yes!" said Miss Purvis. "Don't mention it. Think what +it has done to our Kappa Alpha."</p> + +<p>"What do you suppose ever became of that girl?" murmured Miss Dexter, +thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"I can't imagine. It was a sorry time, take it all in all. Let's not +talk of it, Merry. Our sorority has a setback from which it will never +recover."</p> + +<p>All this was literally Greek to Ruth, of course. Nor did she listen with +any attention. There were other things for her and Helen to be +interested in, for the main building of the college had come into view.</p> + +<p>They had been gradually climbing the easy slope of College Hill from the +east. The main edifice of Ardmore did not stand upon the summit of the +eminence. Behind and above the big, winged building the hill rose to a +wooded, rounding summit, sheltering the whole estate from the north +winds.</p> + +<p>Just upon the edge of the forest at the top was an octagon-shaped +observatory. Ruth had read about it in the Year Book. From the balcony +of this observatory one could see, on a clear day, to the extreme west +end of Lake Remona—quite twenty-five miles away.</p> + +<p>The newcomers, however, were more interested at present in the big +building which faced the lake, half-way down the southern slope of +College Hill, and which contained the hall and classrooms, as well as +the principal offices. The beautiful campus was in front of this +building.</p> + +<p>"All off for Dare and Dorrance," shouted the stage driver, stopping his +vehicle.</p> + +<p>The driveway here split, one branch descending the hill, while the main +thread wound on past the front of the main building. Ruth and Helen +scrambled down with their bags.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," said Miss Dexter smiling on them. "Perhaps I shall see you +when you come over to the registrar's office. We seniors have to do the +honors for you freshies."</p> + +<p>Miss Purvis, too, bade them a pleasant good-bye. The chums set off down +the driveway. On their left was the great, sandstone, glass-roofed bulk +of the gymnasium, and they caught a glimpse of the fenced athletic field +behind it.</p> + +<p>Ahead were the two big dormitories upon this side of the campus—Dare +and Dorrance Halls. The driveway curved around to the front of these +buildings, and now the private touring car the girls had before noticed, +came shooting around from the lake side of the dormitories, passing Ruth +and Helen, empty save for the chauffeur.</p> + +<p>"Goodness!" exclaimed Helen. "I wonder if that dressy girl with all the +goods and chattels is bunked in <i>our</i> dormitory?"</p> + +<p>"'Our' dormitory, no less!" laughed Ruth. "Do you feel as much at home +already as <i>that</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Goodness! No. I'm only trying to make myself believe it. Ruth, what an +e-<i>nor</i>-mous place this is! I feel just as small as—as a little mouse +in an elephant's stall."</p> + +<p>Ruth laughed, but before she could reply they rounded the corner of the +building nearest to the campus and saw the group of girls upon its broad +porch, the stranger at the foot of the steps, and the heap of baggage +piled where the chauffeur had left it.</p> + +<p>"Hello!" May MacGreggor said, aloud, "here are a couple more kittens. +Look at the pretty girl with the brown eyes and hair. And the +smart-looking, black-eyed one. Now! <i>here</i> are freshies after my own +heart."</p> + +<p>Edith Phelps refused to be called off from the girl and the baggage, +however. She said coolly:</p> + +<p>"I really don't know what you will do with all that truck, Miss +Fielding. The rooms at Dare are rather small. You could not possibly get +all those bags and the trunk—and certainly not that hat-box—into one +of these rooms."</p> + +<p>"My name isn't Fielding," said the strange girl, paling now, but whether +from anger or as a forerunner to tears it would have been hard to tell. +Her face was not one to be easily read.</p> + +<p>"Your name isn't <i>Fielding</i>?" gasped Edie Phelps, while the latter's +friends burst into laughter. "'R. F.'! What does that stand for, pray?"</p> + +<p>At this moment the fleshy girl who had been all this time in the +background on the porch, flung herself forward, burst through the group, +and ran down the steps. She had spied Ruth and Helen approaching.</p> + +<p>"Ruthie! Helen! <i>Ruth Fielding!</i> Isn't this delightsome?"</p> + +<p>The fleshy girl tried to hug both the chums from Cheslow at once. Edie +Phelps and the rest of the girls on the porch gazed and listened in +amazement. Edie turned upon the girl with the heap of baggage, +accusingly.</p> + +<p>"You're a good one! What do you mean by coming here and fooling us all +in this way? What's your name?"</p> + +<p>"Rebecca Frayne—if you think you have a right to ask," said the new +girl, sharply.</p> + +<p>"And you're not the canned drama authoress?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you mean, I'm sure," said Rebecca Frayne. "But I +<i>would</i> like to know what I'm to do with this baggage."</p> + +<p>Ruth had come to the foot of the steps now with Helen and the fleshy +girl, whom the chums had hailed gladly as "Jennie Stone." The girl of +the Red Mill heard the speech of the stranger and noted her woebegone +accent. She turned with a smile to Rebecca Frayne.</p> + +<p>"Oh! I know about that," she said. "Just leave your trunk and bags here +and put your card and the number of your room on them. The men will be +along very soon to carry them up for you. I read that in the Year Book."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Rebecca Frayne.</p> + +<p>The group of sophomores and freshmen on the porch opened a way for the +Briarwood trio to enter the house, and said never a word. Jennie Stone +was, as she confessed, grinning broadly.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>GETTING SETTLED</h3> + + +<p>"What does this mean, Heavy Jennie?" demanded Helen, pinching the very +comfortable arm of their fleshy friend.</p> + +<p>"What does that mean? Ouch, Helen! You know you're pinching something +when you pinch <i>me</i>."</p> + +<p>"That's why I like to. No fun in trying to make an impression on bones, +you know."</p> + +<p>"But it doesn't hurt bones so much," grumbled Jennie. "Remember what the +fruit-stand man printed on his sign: 'If you musta pincha da fruit, +pincha da cocoanut.' You can't so easy bruise bony folk, Helen."</p> + +<p>"You are dodging the issue, Heavy," declared Helen. "What does this +mean?"</p> + +<p>"What does what mean?" demanded the fleshy girl, grinning widely again.</p> + +<p>"How came you here, of course?" Ruth put in, smiling upon their gay and +usually thoughtless friend. "You said you did not think you could come +to Ardmore."</p> + +<p>"And you had conditions to make up if you did come," declared Helen.</p> + +<p>"I made 'em up," said Jennie, laughing.</p> + +<p>"And you're here ahead of us! Oh, Heavy, what sport!" cried Helen, +undertaking to pinch the plump girl again.</p> + +<p>"Now, that's enough of that," said Jennie Stone. "I have feelings, as +well as other folk, Helen Cameron, despite my name. Have a heart!"</p> + +<p>"We are so glad to see you, Heavy," said Ruth. "You mustn't mind Helen's +exuberance."</p> + +<p>"And you never said a word about coming here when you wrote to us down +South," Helen said, eyeing the fleshy girl curiously.</p> + +<p>"I didn't know what to do," confessed Jennie Stone. "I talked it over +with Aunt Kate. She agreed with me that, if I had finished school, I'd +put on about five pounds a month, and that's all I <i>would</i> do."</p> + +<p>"Goodness!" gasped Ruth and Helen, together.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Heavy, nodding with emphasis. "That's what I did the first +month. Nothing to do, you see, but eat and sleep. If I'd had to go to +work——"</p> + +<p>"But couldn't you find something to do?" demanded the energetic Ruth.</p> + +<p>"At Lighthouse Point? You know just how lazy a spot that is. And in +winter in the city it would be worse. So I determined to come here."</p> + +<p>"To keep from getting fatter!" cried Helen. "A new reason for coming to +college."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Jennie, seriously, "I missed the gym work and I missed +being uncomfortable."</p> + +<p>"Uncomfortable?" gasped Ruth and Helen.</p> + +<p>"Yes. You know, my father's a big man, and so are my older brothers big. +Everything in our house is big and well stuffed and comfortable—chairs +and beds and all. I never was comfortable in my bed at Briarwood."</p> + +<p>"Horrible!" cried Helen, while Ruth laughed heartily.</p> + +<p>"And <i>here</i>!" went on Heavy, lugubriously. "Wait till you see. Do you +know, all they give us here is <i>cots</i> to sleep on? <i>Cots</i>, mind! +Goodness! when I try to turn over I roll right out on the floor. You +ought to see my sides already, how black-and-blue they are. I've been +here two nights."</p> + +<p>"Why did you come so early?"</p> + +<p>"So as to try to get used to the food and the beds," groaned Heavy. "But +I never will. One teacher already has advised me about my diet. She says +vegetables are best for me. I ate a peck of string beans this noon for +lunch—strings and all—and I expect you can pick basting threads out of +me almost anywhere!"</p> + +<p>"The teacher didn't advise you to eat <i>all</i> the vegetables there were, +did she?" asked Ruth, as they climbed the stairs.</p> + +<p>"She did not signify the amount. I just ate till I couldn't get down +another one. I sha'n't want to see another string bean for some time."</p> + +<p>Ruth and Helen easily found the rooms that had been drawn for them the +June previous. Of course, they were not the best rooms in the hall, for +the seniors had first choice, and then the juniors and sophomores had +their innings before the freshmen had a chance.</p> + +<p>But there was a door between Ruth's and Helen's rooms, as they had +hoped, and Jennie's room was just across the corridor.</p> + +<p>"We Sweetbriars will stick together, all right," said the fleshy girl. +"For defence and offence, if necessary."</p> + +<p>"You evidently expect to have a strenuous time here, Heavy," laughed +Ruth.</p> + +<p>"No telling," returned Jennie Stone, wagging her head. "I fancy there +are some 'cut-ups' among the sophs who will try to make our sweet young +lives miserable. That Edie Phelps, for instance." She told them how the +sophomores had met the new girl, Rebecca Frayne, and why.</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear!" said Ruth. "But that was all on <i>my</i> account. We shall have +to be particularly nice to Miss Frayne. I hope she's on our corridor."</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose they will haze you, Ruth, just because you wrote that +scenario?" asked Helen, somewhat troubled.</p> + +<p>"There's no hazing at Ardmore," laughed Ruth. "They can't bother me. +'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me!'" +she singsonged.</p> + +<p>"Just the same," Jennie said, morosely, "that Edie Phelps has a sharp +tongue."</p> + +<p>"We, too, have tongues," proclaimed Helen, who had no intention of being +put upon.</p> + +<p>"Now, girls, we want to take just what is handed us good-naturedly," +Ruth advised. "We are freshmen. Next year we will be sophomores, and can +take it out on the new girls then," and she laughed. "You know, we've +all been through it at Briarwood."</p> + +<p>"Goodness, yes!" agreed Helen. "It can't be as bad at college as it was +during our first term at Briarwood Hall."</p> + +<p>"This Edie Phelps can't be as mean as The Fox 'useter was,' I suppose," +added Jennie Stone. "Besides, I fancy the sophs need us freshmen—our +good will and help, I mean. The two lower classes here have to line up +against the juniors and seniors."</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear, me," sighed Ruth. "I hoped we had come here to study, not to +fight."</p> + +<p>"Pooh!" said the fleshy girl, "where do you go in this world that you +don't have to fight for your rights? You never get something for +nothing."</p> + +<p>However, the possibility of trouble disturbed their minds but slightly. +For the rest of the day the trio were very busy. At least, Ruth and +Helen were busy arranging their rooms and unpacking, and Jennie Stone +was busy watching them.</p> + +<p>They went to the registrar's office that day, as this was required. +Otherwise, they were in their rooms, after their baggage was delivered, +occupied until almost dinner time. Heavy had been on the ground long +enough, as she said, to know most of the ropes. They were supposed to +dress rather formally for dinner, although not more than two-thirds of +the girls had arrived.</p> + +<p>There were in Dare Hall alone as many pupils as had attended Briarwood +altogether. This was, indeed, a much larger school life on which they +were entering.</p> + +<p>So many of the girls they saw were older than themselves—and the trio +of girls had been among the oldest girls at Briarwood during their last +semester.</p> + +<p>"Why, we're only <i>kids</i>," sighed Helen. "There's a girl on this +corridor—at the other end, thank goodness!—who looks old enough to be +a teacher."</p> + +<p>"Miss Comstock," said Heavy. "I know. She's a senior. There are no +teachers rooming at Dare. Only the housekeeper downstairs. But you'll +find a senior at the head of each table—and Miss Comstock looks awfully +stern."</p> + +<p>Ruth and Helen found the rooms they were to occupy rather different from +those they had chummed in at Briarwood. In the first place, these rooms +were smaller, and the furniture was very plain. As Jennie had warned +them, there were only cots to sleep upon—very nice cots, it was true, +and there was a heavy coverlet for each, to turn the cots into divans in +the daytime.</p> + +<p>"I tell you what we can do," Ruth suggested at the start. "Let's make +one room the study, and both sleep in the other."</p> + +<p>"Bully idea," agreed Helen.</p> + +<p>They proceeded to do this, the result being a very plain sleeping room, +indeed, but a well-furnished study. They had brought with them all the +pennants and other keepsakes from Briarwood, and sofa pillows and +cushions for the chairs, and innumerable pictures.</p> + +<p>Before night the study looked as homelike as the old room had at the +preparatory school. They had rugs, too, and one big lounging chair, +purchased second-hand, that Heavy had, of course, occupied most of the +afternoon.</p> + +<p>"Well! I hope you've finished at last," sighed the fleshy girl when the +warning bell for dinner rang. "I'm about tired out."</p> + +<p>"You should be," agreed Ruth, commiseratingly. "You've helped so much."</p> + +<p>"Advising is harder than moving furniture and tacking up pictures," +proclaimed Jennie. "Brain-fag is the trouble with me and hunger."</p> + +<p>"We admit the final symptom," said Helen. "But if your brain is ever +fagged, Heavy, it will only be from thinking up new and touching menus. +Come on, now, we're going to scramble into some fresh frocks. You go and +do the same, Miss Lazybones."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>MISS CULLAM'S TROUBLE</h3> + + +<p>Ruth and Helen were much more amply supplied with frocks of a somewhat +dressy order than when they began a semester at Briarwood Hall. Their +wardrobes here were well filled, and of course there was no supervision +of what they wore as there had been at the preparatory school.</p> + +<p>When they went downstairs to the dining-room with Jennie Stone, they +found they had made no mistake in "putting their best foot forward," as +Helen called it.</p> + +<p>"My! I feel quite as though I were going to a party," Ruth confessed.</p> + +<p>The girls rustled through the corridors and down the wide stairways, +laughing and talking, many of the freshmen, it was evident, already +having made friends.</p> + +<p>"There's that girl," whispered Jennie Stone, suddenly.</p> + +<p>"What girl?" asked Helen.</p> + +<p>"Oh! the girl with all the luggage," laughed Ruth.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the fleshy girl. "What was her name?"</p> + +<p>"Rebecca Frayne," said Ruth, who had a good memory.</p> + +<p>She bowed to the rather over-dressed freshman. She saw that nobody was +walking with Rebecca Frayne.</p> + +<p>"I hope she sits at our table," Ruth added.</p> + +<p>"Of course," Helen rejoined, with a smile, "Ruth has already spied +somebody to be good to."</p> + +<p>"Shucks!" said Jennie. "I don't think she'd make a particularly pleasant +addition to our party."</p> + +<p>"What does <i>that</i> matter?" demanded Helen, roguishly. "Ruth is always +picking up the sore-eyed kittens."</p> + +<p>"I think that is unkind," returned Ruth, shaking her head. "Maybe Miss +Frayne is a very nice girl."</p> + +<p>"I wonder what she's got in all those bags and the big trunk?" said +Jennie. "I see she's wearing the same dress she traveled in."</p> + +<p>"I wager she misses her maid," sighed Helen. "Can't dress without one, I +s'pose."</p> + +<p>But there were too many other girls to watch and to comment on for the +trio to give much attention to Rebecca Frayne. Ruth, however, said, with +a little laugh:</p> + +<p>"I must feel some interest in her. Her initials are the same as mine."</p> + +<p>"And her arrival certainly took the curse off yours, my dear," Jennie +agreed. "Edie Phelps and her crowd were laying for you and no mistake."</p> + +<p>"I wonder if we shouldn't eschew all slang now that we have come to +Ardmore?" Helen suggested demurely.</p> + +<p>"You set the example then, my lady!" cried Heavy.</p> + +<p>Miss Comstock, the very severe looking senior, sat at the table at which +the Briarwood trio of freshmen found their numbers; but Miss Frayne was +at the housekeeper's table. There were ten or twelve girls at each table +and throughout the meal a pleasant hum of voices filled the room.</p> + +<p>Ruth and Helen, not to mention their fleshy chum, were soon at their +ease with their neighbors; nor did Miss Comstock prove such a bugaboo as +they feared. Although the senior was a particularly silent girl, she had +a pleasant smile and was no wet blanket upon the enjoyment of the +dinner. At least, she did not serve as a wet blanket upon Jennie Stone. +The fleshy girl's appetite betrayed the fact that she had been stinted +at noon, and that a diet of string beans was scarcely a satisfactory +one.</p> + +<p>As they left the dining-room and came out into the wide, well-lighted +entrance hall of the house, a lady just entering bowed to Jennie Stone.</p> + +<p>"There she is!" groaned the fleshy girl. "Caught in the act!"</p> + +<p>"Who is she, Heavy?" demanded Helen, in an undertone.</p> + +<p>"She looks nice," observed Ruth.</p> + +<p>"Miss Cullam. She's the one that advised the string beans," declared +Jennie out of the corner of her mouth. Then she added, most cordially: +"Oh! how do you do! These are my two chums from Briarwood—Ruth Fielding +and Helen Cameron. Miss Cullam, girls."</p> + +<p>The teacher, who was rather elderly, but very brisk and neat, if not +wholly attractive, approached smiling.</p> + +<p>"You will meet me in mathematics, young ladies," she said, shaking hands +with the two introduced freshmen. "And how are you to-night, Miss Stone? +Have you stuck to your vegetable diet, as I advised?"</p> + +<p>Heavy made her jolly, round face seem as long as possible, and groaned +hollowly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Miss Cullam!" she said, "I believe I could have stuck to the diet, +if——"</p> + +<p>"Well, if what?" demanded the teacher.</p> + +<p>"If the diet would only stick to <i>me</i>. But it doesn't. I ate <i>pecks</i> of +string beans for lunch, and by the middle of the afternoon I felt like a +castaway after two weeks upon a desert island."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense, Miss Stone!" exclaimed the teacher, yet laughing too. Heavy +was so ridiculous that it was impossible not to be amused. "You should +practise abstinence. Really, you are the very fattest girl at Ardmore, I +do believe."</p> + +<p>"That sounds horrid!" declared Jennie with sudden vigor, and she did not +look pleased.</p> + +<p>"You may as well face the truth, my dear," said the mathematics teacher, +eyeing the distressing curves of the fleshy girl without prejudice. +"Here are upwards of a thousand girls—or will be when all have arrived +and registered. And you will be locally famous."</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't!" groaned Ruth.</p> + +<p>"Poor Heavy!" gasped Helen.</p> + +<p>Miss Cullam uttered a short laugh.</p> + +<p>"Your friends evidently love you, my dear," she said, patting the fleshy +girl's plump cheek. "But you want to make new friends—you wish to be +admired, I know. It will not be pleasant to gain the reputation of being +Ardmore's heavyweight, will it?"</p> + +<p>"It sounds pretty bad," admitted Heavy, coming out of her momentary +slough of despond. "But we all have our little troubles, don't we, Miss +Cullam?"</p> + +<p>Somehow this question seemed to quench the teacher of mathematics' good +spirits. A cloud settled upon her countenance, and she nodded seriously.</p> + +<p>"We all have; true enough, Miss Stone," she said. "And I hope you, as +pupils at Ardmore, will never suffer such disturbance of mind as I, a +teacher, sometimes do."</p> + +<p>Ruth, who had started up the stairway next to the teacher, put a +friendly hand upon Miss Cullam's arm. "I hope we three will never add to +your burdens, my dear Miss Cullam," she whispered.</p> + +<p>The instructor flashed a rather wondering look at the girl of the Red +Mill; then she smiled. It was a grouty person, indeed, who could look +into Ruth Fielding's frank countenance and not return her smile.</p> + +<p>"Bless you! I have heard of you already, Ruth Fielding. I have no idea I +shall be troubled by you or your friends." They had fallen behind the +others a few steps. "But we never can tell. Since last term—well!"</p> + +<p>Much, evidently, was on Miss Cullam's mind; yet she kept step with Ruth +when they came to the corridor on which the rooms of the three +Briarwoods opened. Ruth could always find something pleasant to say. +This woman with the care-graved countenance smiled whimsically as she +listened, keeping at the girl's shoulder.</p> + +<p>Evidently somewhat oppressed by the attentions of the instructor, Helen +and Heavy had disappeared into the fleshy girl's room.</p> + +<p>"Do come in and see how nicely we have fixed our sitting-room—study, I +mean, of course," and Ruth laughed, opening the door.</p> + +<p>"Looks homelike," confessed Miss Cullam. Then, with a startled glance +around the room, she murmured: "Why, it's the very room!"</p> + +<p>"What is that you say?" asked Ruth, curiously.</p> + +<p>"Do you know who had this room last year?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I haven't the first idea," returned the girl of the Red Mill.</p> + +<p>"Miss Rolff."</p> + +<p>"Do I know her?" asked Ruth, somewhat puzzled.</p> + +<p>"She left before the end of the term. I—I am not sure just what the +matter was with her. But she is connected in my mind with a great +misfortune."</p> + +<p>"Indeed, Miss Cullam?" said the sympathetic Ruth.</p> + +<p>It was, perhaps, the sympathy in her tone that urged the instructor to +confide her trouble to a strange girl—a freshman, at that!</p> + +<p>"I hope I shall never have the same fears and doubts regarding you and +your friends, Miss Fielding, that I have felt about some of these girls +who are now sophomores—and some of the juniors, too."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Miss Cullam! What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll tell you, my dear," the teacher said, taking the comfortable +chair at Ruth's gestured recommendation, as the girl switched on the +electricity. "You seem like an above-the-average sensible girl——"</p> + +<p>Ruth laughed at that, but she dimpled, too, and Miss Cullam joined in +the laughter.</p> + +<p>"Some of these girls were mere flyaways," she said. "But not many, after +all. Girls who come as far as college, even to the freshman course in +college, usually have something in their pretty noddles besides ideas +for dressing their hair.</p> + +<p>"Well, I will confide in you, as I say, because I have a fancy to. I +like you. Listen to the troubles of a poor mathematics instructor."</p> + +<p>"Yes, Miss Cullam," said Ruth, demurely.</p> + +<p>"You see, my dear," said Miss Cullam, who had a whimsical way about her +that Ruth had begun to delight in, "after all, we college instructors +are all necessarily of the race of watch dogs."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Miss Cullam!"</p> + +<p>"Our girls are put upon their honor and are in the main worthy of our +confidence. But we have experiences that show us how frail human virtue +is.</p> + +<p>"For instance, there are examinations. A most trying necessity are +examinations. They come mainly toward the close of the college year, and +a few of our girls are not prepared to pass.</p> + +<p>"Last year I felt that some of my freshmen and sophomores could not +possibly comply with the mathematical requirements. When I received from +the printers my copies of the questions to be proposed to the classes I +really felt that a few of my girls were going to have a hard time," and +she smiled again, yet there was still trouble in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I chanced to be in the library when I received the papers. You have not +seen our library yet, have you, Miss Fielding?"</p> + +<p>"No, Miss Cullam. You know, Helen and I arrived only this afternoon at +Ardmore."</p> + +<p>"That is so. Well, the library is a very beautifully furnished building. +It was a gift from certain alumni. I was alone in the reception-room +when I examined the papers, and being called suddenly to a duty and not +wishing to take the papers with me, I rolled them up and thrust them +into a vase standing upon the table. When I returned in a few minutes, +still hurried by a task before me, I found that I had thrust the papers +so far into the small-mouthed vase that I could not reach them. Quite a +ridiculous situation, was it not?</p> + +<p>"But now the plot thickens," went on the teacher, with a sigh. "The +papers were safe enough there, of course. The vase was a very beautiful +and valuable silver one, and had its place of honor on that table. I +could not stop to retrieve the question papers with a pair of tongs—as +I might, had I not been hurried. When I returned armed with the tongs in +the morning——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Miss Cullam?" rejoined Ruth, interestedly, as the teacher paused +in her story.</p> + +<p>"The vase—and, of course, the question papers—was gone," said the +lady, in a sepulchral tone.</p> + +<p>"Oh!"</p> + +<p>"And almost all the girls I had marked for failure in mathematics went +through the examination with colors flying!"</p> + +<p>"Oh!" exclaimed Ruth again, and quite blankly.</p> + +<p>"Do you see the terrible suspicion that has been eating at my mind ever +since? There happened to be other unfortunate matters connected with the +disappearance of the vase, too. <i>It</i> has never been found. One of the +very freshmen who I feared would fail in the examination left the +college under a cloud."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Miss Cullam!" gasped Ruth. "Is she suspected of stealing the +vase—and the examination papers?"</p> + +<p>"I scarcely know what to say in answer to that," said Miss Cullam, +gravely. "It seems that one of the sororities was initiating candidates +on that night. One of the—er—'stunts,' as they call their ridiculous +ceremonies, included the filching of this vase after dark and its burial +somewhere on Bliss Island. So Dr. Milroth later informed me.</p> + +<p>"The girl chosen for this ridiculous performance, Miss Rolff, who +occupied this very room, was found at daybreak wandering alone upon the +island in a hysterical condition. She insisted upon leaving the college +immediately, before I had discovered the absence of the vase and the +missing papers.</p> + +<p>"I felt that I could not arouse suspicion in Dr. Milroth's mind by +mentioning the papers. I secured copies from the printer. Of course, it +is all ancient history now, my dear," ended the mathematics teacher, +with a sigh. "But you see, suspicion once fastened upon my mind, it +still troubles me."</p> + +<p>"But what became of the poor girl?" asked Ruth, sympathetically.</p> + +<p>"That I cannot tell you," Miss Cullam said, rising. "She has not +returned this year, and I understand that Dr. Milroth lost trace of +her."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>FAME IS NOT ALWAYS AN ASSET</h3> + + +<p>Just why the teacher of mathematics had taken Ruth Fielding into her +confidence upon this rather curious event, it would be hard to say. +Teachers are human like other people, and perhaps sometimes prone to +gossip.</p> + +<p>However, Ruth felt that it was a confidence, and she did not mention the +matter of the missing examination papers to her chum or to Jennie Stone. +The other Briarwood girls were the only members of the freshman class +Ruth was likely to be intimate with for some days.</p> + +<p>Friendships are not made so quickly at college as at smaller schools. +There were so many girls that it took some time for the trio to adjust +themselves and to become acquainted with their mates.</p> + +<p>In the morning they went again to the registrar's office, and there they +met Miss Dexter, who was appointed to escort them about, show them the +college offices, the bookstore, and introduce them to such of the +instructors as came in the path of the new girls.</p> + +<p>Of course, their tuition fees—one hundred and seventy-five dollars +each—for the year had been already paid. Their board would be nine +dollars weekly, and all books, stationery, gymnastic suits and supplies, +as well as medical and hospital fees (if they chanced to be ill) would +be extra.</p> + +<p>There were only a few simple rules of behavior to note. If a girl is not +well trained in ladylike demeanor before arriving at the college age she +is, of course, hopeless. The faculty have other things to do besides +watching the manners as well as the mental attributes, of the students.</p> + +<p>Ruth and her friends learned that they were not to leave the college +grounds before six in the morning.</p> + +<p>"And who'd want to?" demanded Heavy. "That's the best time to sleep."</p> + +<p>However, the fleshy girl soon learned that if she was to have a +reasonable time for breakfast she must be up betimes. The meal was +served from seven to a quarter to eight. Chapel was at eight-thirty, but +not compulsory. Recitations began at nine and lunch was at twelve.</p> + +<p>Recitations and lectures (these latter did not interest our freshmen, +for they had no lectures the first year) ended at three-thirty, when, +all the girls were supposed to take gymnastics of some kind. Otherwise, +their time was their own until dinner at six o'clock.</p> + +<p>The girls had the time free from seven till seven-thirty. The following +two hours were those devoted to quiet study (or should be) in their own +rooms, or in the reference department of the library. At ten all were +supposed to retire.</p> + +<p>The students might leave the grounds at any time during the day, but +never in the evening without a chaperon. These rules and requirements +seemed easy enough to the trio from Briarwood Hall, used as they were to +the far stricter oversight of the teachers in the preparatory +institution.</p> + +<p>More girls appeared at Ardmore that day, and the one following would see +the opening of the semester and, as Jennie Stone said, "the buckling +down to real work." A notice was posted on the bulletin boards already +commanding all freshmen to meet at Hoskin Hall after dinner that +evening, signed by the president of the sophomore class.</p> + +<p>"What's <i>she</i> got to do with <i>us</i>?" Helen demanded, with a sniff.</p> + +<p>"Aren't we allowed to run our own class affairs here?" Heavy asked.</p> + +<p>"I fancy not," Ruth rejoined. "Miss Dexter told me that the sophs and +freshies were usually lined up against the two older classes. The sophs +need us, and we need them."</p> + +<p>"I have an idea," said Heavy, with a warning shake of her head, "that +some of the sophs don't care so much for us."</p> + +<p>The trio were returning from the college hall as they chatted. Helen +suddenly exclaimed:</p> + +<p>"Girls! did you ever see so many tam-o'-shanters in your little lives? +And such a wealth of colors?"</p> + +<p>It was true that every girl in sight (and there were "just hundreds!" to +quote Heavy again), unless she were bareheaded, wore a tam-o'-shanter.</p> + +<p>"The most popular thing in head covering at Ardmore this year, that is +sure," said Ruth.</p> + +<p>"Oh! will you look at the one that Frayne girl is wearing?" Helen +gasped.</p> + +<p>"Goodness!" said Heavy. "Looks like an Italian sunset."</p> + +<p>"Or a badly scrambled egg," put in Helen. "There! I believe that girl +would look a fright whatever she put on."</p> + +<p>"She can't help her taste, poor girl," Ruth said.</p> + +<p>"My!" sighed Heavy. "I like to hear you talk, Ruth. You're as full of +excuses for everybody criticised as a chestnut is of meat," and she +nibbled one of the nuts in question as she spoke. Then:</p> + +<p>"Wow! Oh, the nasty thing!"</p> + +<p>Helen laughed uproariously. "Something besides meat in that chestnut, +Heavy. Did it squirm much?"</p> + +<p>"Don't ask me," said the fleshy girl, gloomily. "Of such is life! 'I +never owned a gay gazelle——'"</p> + +<p>"Cut it out. You never owned a gazelle of any kind," said Helen. "You +know you never did."</p> + +<p>It was just here that the trio came upon a group of girls of whom Edith +Phelps was evidently the leader. It was opposite the gymnasium, under +the wide-spreading oaks that gave shade to that quarter of the campus. +The Briarwood girls had been about to enter the gymnasium building to +look around.</p> + +<p>Edith and her friends were mostly in gymnasium costumes. They had been +tossing the medicine ball; but it was plain that they had gathered here +near the path the three freshmen friends followed, for a purpose.</p> + +<p>"Oh, here comes the leading lady!" cried Edith Phelps, in a high and +affected voice. "Get set! Camera!"</p> + +<p>The girls, or most of them, struck most ridiculous attitudes at Edie's +word, while an oblong, black box suddenly appeared, affixed upon a +tripod, and May MacGreggor, who was out for fun as much as any of the +sophomores, began to turn a tiny crank on one side of the box.</p> + +<p>"Hi! what are you trying to do—you fat person there?" demanded Edie, +excitedly, imitating a movie director, and waving back the amazed and +somewhat angry Jennie Stone. "Want to crab the film?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, the mean things!" gasped Helen, growing as red as though the joke +were aimed directly at herself.</p> + +<p>"Cracky!" murmured the fleshy girl, who couldn't help seeing the +ridiculous side of it. "Isn't that funny?"</p> + +<p>At the moment, too, a thin little tune began to wander from the black +box, none other than "The Wearing of the Green." Inside the box was one +of those little, old-fashioned Swiss music boxes, and May was +industriously turning the crank.</p> + +<p>"Register fear, Miss Fielding!" shouted Edith, energetically. "Fear, I +say! Don't you realize that you are about to be flung over a cliff and +that a mad bull is waiting bel-o-o-w to catch you on his horns? Close up +of the bull, please!"</p> + +<p>Ruth had been first surprised, then not a little displeased; but she +knew instinctively if she showed that this buffoonry offended and +troubled her it would only be repeated again and again.</p> + +<p>Much better able than her chum, Helen Cameron, to control her features, +she began now to smile broadly.</p> + +<p>"Girls!" she said aloud to her two friends, "it must be that that girl +knows Mr. Grimes personally or has seen him at work. You remember Mr. +Grimes, the Alectrion director who filmed our play at Briarwood?"</p> + +<p>"And was so nasty to Hazel Gray? I should say!" exclaimed Jennie, +instantly falling in with Ruth's attempt to pass the incident off as a +joke.</p> + +<p>"I think <i>she's</i> nasty-mean," muttered Helen, her black eyes snapping.</p> + +<p>"If you played that tune while making a film for me, Miss MacGreggor, I +should want to jig," Heavy cried, and started to do a few ridiculous +steps in front of the black box.</p> + +<p>Ruth continued to smile, too, saying to Edith Phelps: "You might have +warned us of this. I'd have liked to primp a little before posing for +the camera."</p> + +<p>The other girls laughed. It did not take much to make them laugh, and it +is possible that they laughed as much at Edie as with her. But as the +trio of freshmen went on toward Dare Hall, Ruth shook her head +doubtfully.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter, Ruthie?" asked Helen, squeezing her arm. "The mean +things!"</p> + +<p>"I wonder," murmured Ruth.</p> + +<p>"You wonder what?" demanded Helen.</p> + +<p>Ruth sighed. "I guess fame isn't always an asset," she said.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>THE STONE FACE</h3> + + +<p>Ruth knew better than to show anger over any such silly joke. If she was +to be made the laughing stock of her class by the sophomores, she might +as well face it and bear the cross good-naturedly.</p> + +<p>Ruth was as sensitive as any refined girl. It hurt her to be ridiculed. +But she had not spent years at boarding school without learning that the +best way—indeed, the only way—to bear successfully such indignity +is to ignore it. That is, to ignore the fun poked at one as far as +possible. To bear the jokes with a smile. So she would not allow her +friends to comment much upon this scene before the gymnasium building.</p> + +<p>She had never given herself airs because of her success in writing +scenarios. Another girl might have done so. But Ruth was naturally +modest, and had never really ceased to be surprised at her own success.</p> + +<p>The new scenario she was at work upon, the scenes of which were laid at +the Red Mill, was born of an idea she had evolved when her attention had +first been turned to motion-picture writing.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hammond, her kind friend and the president of the Alectrion Film +Corporation, had advised her to postpone the use of this idea until she +had tried her apprentice hand on other and simpler scenarios. The time +seemed ripe now, however, for the writing of "Crossed Wires," and he had +encouraged her to go ahead.</p> + +<p>All the visible effect Edith Phelps' joke had upon Ruth was to send her +to the unfinished scenario. After returning from the college offices on +this occasion she worked on her play until lunch time.</p> + +<p>"There's too much new to see and to do for you to pore over letter +writing, Ruth," Helen declared, misunderstanding her friend's +occupation. "We want to see Ardmore. We want to go out on the lake if we +can get a boat. We've got to see the gym and the library. And to-night +we must turn up at this meeting, it seems, and see what Miss Dunstan, +the soph president, has to say to us freshies."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I want to go out on the lake!" cried Ruth, agreeing. "And I want to +explore that island."</p> + +<p>"What island?" demanded Jennie, coming into the chums' study.</p> + +<p>"Bliss Island."</p> + +<p>"'Tisn't part of the college grounds," said the fleshy girl.</p> + +<p>"Don't care. Want to see it," declared Ruth. "I hope we can get a boat. +I didn't see many in use this morning."</p> + +<p>"Some of the girls own their own. Especially canoes," said Jennie Stone. +"But it's <i>the</i> thing to make the 'eight.' Let me tell you, us Ardmores +are supposed to be some rowists! Our first eight beat the Gillings +College first eight last June."</p> + +<p>"We'll all try for the eight then," Helen said.</p> + +<p>"And <i>you</i>, Jennie?" asked Ruth, mildly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>me</i>!"</p> + +<p>"String beans for yours, Heavy," Helen cried, clapping her hands. +"You'll have to diet on them until you have reduced to little more than +a string yourself if you expect to make the eight."</p> + +<p>"Bet I could do it," grumbled Heavy.</p> + +<p>"A bet's a bet!" cried Helen. "I take you."</p> + +<p>"Don't be rude, girls," advised Ruth. "You sound like regular, +sure-enough gamblers. And, anyway, Heavy will never be able to make the +eight. She might as well pay her wager now."</p> + +<p>"Oh! oh! oh!" laughed Helen. "A palpable hit!"</p> + +<p>"You just see!" said Heavy, firmly. "I'll show you."</p> + +<p>"My dear," Ruth said, "if you show us a sylph-like form in time to make +the freshman eight——"</p> + +<p>"It will be the eighth wonder of the world," finished Helen.</p> + +<p>Jennie tossed her head. "I don't know about the sylph-like form, but at +least I mean to possess a slender figure when I have followed Miss +Cullam's advice on diet. You'll see!"</p> + +<p>"Poor Heavy!" groaned Helen. "She is letting herself in for a most awful +time, and no mistake."</p> + +<p>After luncheon the three girls set forth to explore the place.</p> + +<p>"If I keep this up I'll need nothing else to get me thin. We have +tramped miles," the fleshy girl announced at length. "Oh! my poor, poor +feet!"</p> + +<p>"Wear sensible shoes, then," said Helen, who was the very last person to +follow her own advice on this point.</p> + +<p>"Easy enough to say," groaned Jennie. "There ain't any such an animal! +You know that in this day and generation shoe makers have ceased to make +sensible shoes. I look at 'em in the shop windows," pursued the aching +girl, "and I wonder what sort of foot the human pedal extremity will +become in a generation or two. Those pointed toes!</p> + +<p>"Why," declared the suddenly warmed up Jennie Stone, "they tell us about +a two-toed sloth living in Central and South America. Believe <i>me</i>! the +present-day shoemaker seems to have secured a last to fit a <i>one</i>-toed +sloth."</p> + +<p>"I don't know about the number of their toes," Ruth said, laughing; "but +many of those who wear the fancy shoes are <i>sloths</i>, all right."</p> + +<p>They had looked over the library before this, and walked down past +Hoskin and Hemmingway Halls on the west side of the campus, and so +reached the lake. There were some girls at the boathouse, and a few +craft were out. It was possible for the three friends to get a boat and +Ruth and Helen rowed, with Heavy lazily reclining in the stern.</p> + +<p>"Beginning that strenuous life that is to reduce your weight, Heavy?" +questioned Helen.</p> + +<p>"I am practising deep breathing," Jennie said. "They say that helps a +lot."</p> + +<p>They headed the light skiff directly for Bliss Island. It was not more +than a mile off shore, and was a beautiful place. At the landing they +saw several girls whom they knew were sophomores, for among them was May +MacGreggor.</p> + +<p>"Here are some more of Cook's Trippers," said the Scotch girl, gaily. +"Seeing the sights, <i>mes infantes</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Trying to," Jennie announced. "But you're really not so bad looking, +Miss MacGreggor. I wouldn't call you a 'sight.'"</p> + +<p>"Now, that will be all of that, Miss Stone!" exclaimed the sophomore, +but her brown eyes danced as the other girls laughed. "I believe you +three girls are Briarwoods, are you not?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Helen said.</p> + +<p>"I can believe it," said May. "I have felt the briers. Now, let us call +a truce."</p> + +<p>"With all my heart, Miss MacGreggor," Ruth said quickly.</p> + +<p>"You're a good little thing!" returned the Scotch girl. "I know your +heart is big enough. And we sophs really shouldn't nag you freshies, you +know, for we must pull together against the seniors and juniors. But +you'll hear about that to-night."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Miss MacGreggor," Ruth said. "And now that we are at this +island, would you mind telling us where the Stone Face is situated?"</p> + +<p>"Ah! one of the wonders of the place," said May. "And who told you about +the Stone Face, Freshie?"</p> + +<p>"I have heard it is well worth seeing," said Ruth, demurely.</p> + +<p>"I will be your escort," said May.</p> + +<p>They found the Scotch girl very companionable. She led them up a rugged +path through the trees and around the rocks.</p> + +<p>"And did that girl have to come up here—<i>and in the dark</i>?" murmured +Ruth at last.</p> + +<p>"What girl?" Helen asked.</p> + +<p>"Who are you talking about, Miss Fielding?" asked the sophomore.</p> + +<p>"That girl—Miss Rolff."</p> + +<p>"Oh! don't mention her name!" groaned May MacGreggor. "If it hadn't been +for <i>her</i>, you-uns and we-uns wouldn't be cut out of the sororities. A +wicked shame!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I've heard about that," said Jennie, puffing because of the hard +climb. "Did she really have to come here, and <i>alone</i>, when she was +initiated?"</p> + +<p>"She started for here," said May, gloomily. "With a flashlight, I +believe. But she lost her nerve——</p> + +<p>"There! there's the rock you're looking for."</p> + +<p>It was a huge boulder in an open field. At the angle from which they +viewed it, the face of the rock really bore some semblance to a human +countenance—the features of an old, old woman.</p> + +<p>"Ugly old hag!" was May MacGreggor's comment upon the odd boulder.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>GETTING ON</h3> + + +<p>The three freshmen friends from Briarwood learned a good deal more that +evening than the Year Book would ever have taught them. The girls began +to crowd into the Hoskin Hall dining-room right after dinner. The +seniors and the juniors disappeared, but there were a large number of +sophomores present, besides the president of that class who addressed +the freshmen.</p> + +<p>The latter learned that in athletics especially the rivalry between the +two lower and the two upper classes was intense. It was hardly possible, +of course, for any of the freshmen, and for few of the sophomores to +gain positions on any of the first college teams in basket ball, rowing, +tennis, archery, or other important activities of a physical nature.</p> + +<p>All athletic sports, which included, as well as those named above, +running and jumping and other track work, were under the direct +supervision of the college athletic association. All the girls could +belong to that. Indeed, they were expected to, and the fees were small. +But for a freshman to show sufficient athletic training to make any of +the first teams, would almost seem impossible. They could get on the +scrubs and possess their souls with patience, hoping to win places on +the first teams perhaps in their sophomore year.</p> + +<p>However, there had once been a girl in a freshman class at Ardmore who +succeeded in throwing the hammer a record-making distance; and once a +freshman had been bow oar in the first eight. These were targets to aim +for, Miss Dunstan, the sophomore president, told the new girls.</p> + +<p>She was, of course, a member of the athletic committee, and having told +the new girls all about the sports she proceeded to advise them about +organizing their class and electing officers. This should be done by the +end of the first fortnight. Meanwhile, the freshman should get together, +become acquainted, and electioneer for the election of officers.</p> + +<p>Class politics at Ardmore meant something. There were already groups and +cliques forming among the freshmen. It was an honor to hold office in +the class, and those who were ambitious, or who wished to control the +policy of the class, were already at work.</p> + +<p>Ruth and her friends were so ambitious in quite another direction—in +two, in fact—that they rather overlooked these class activities. The +following day actually opened the work of the semester, and as they +already had their books the trio settled immediately to their lessons.</p> + +<p>They were taking the classical course, a four-years' course. During this +first year their studies would be English, a language (their choice of +French or German) besides the never-to-be-escaped Latin; mathematics, +including geometry, trigonometry and higher algebra. They had not yet +decided whether to take botany or chemistry as the additional study.</p> + +<p>"We want to keep together as much as possible, in classes as well as +out," Helen said. "Let's take the same specials, too."</p> + +<p>"I vote for botany," Ruth suggested. "That will take us into the woods +and fields more."</p> + +<p>"You mean, it will give us an excuse for going into the woods and +fields," Jennie said. "I'm with you. And if I have to walk much to cut +down weight, it will help."</p> + +<p>"My goodness!" exclaimed Helen. "Heavy really <i>has</i> come to college to +get rid of her superabundance of fat."</p> + +<p>"Surest thing you know," agreed the fleshy girl.</p> + +<p>The freshmen learned that they would have from fifteen to eighteen +recitation periods weekly, of forty-five minutes each. The recitation +periods occurred between nine and twelve in the forenoon and one and +three-thirty in the afternoon.</p> + +<p>It took several days to get all these things arranged rightly; the three +friends managed to get together in all classes. The classes numbered +from twenty to forty students and the girls began to get acquainted with +the teachers very quickly. Trust youth for judging middle-age almost +immediately.</p> + +<p>"I like Dr. McCurdy," Helen said, speaking of their English instructor, +who was a man. "He knows what he's about and goes right at it. No +fooling with him. None of this, 'Now young ladies, I hope you are +pleasantly situated and that we are going to be good friends.' Pah!"</p> + +<p>Ruth laughed. "The dear old things!" she said gaily. "They mean +well—even that Miss Mara, whom you are imitating. And she <i>does</i> have a +beautiful French accent, if she <i>is</i> Irish."</p> + +<p>They liked Dr. Frances Milroth. Her talk in chapel was an inspiration, +and that first morning some of the girls came out into the sunshine with +wet eyelashes. They began to realize that they were here at college for +something besides either play or ordinary study. They were at Ardmore to +learn to get a grip on life.</p> + +<p>Instrumental and vocal music could be taken at any time which did not +interfere with the regular recitations, and of course Ruth took the +latter as a special, while Helen did not neglect her violin.</p> + +<p>"I guess I'll take up the study of the oboe," grumbled Jennie Stone. "I +don't seem to know just what to do with myself while you girls are +making sweet sounds."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you roll, Heavy?" demanded Helen.</p> + +<p>"Roll <i>what</i>? Roll a hoop?" asked the fleshy girl.</p> + +<p>"No. Roll a barrel, I should say would be nearer to it," Helen +responded, eyeing Jennie's plump waistline reflectively. "Get down and +roll. Move back the furniture, give yourself plenty of room, and <i>roll</i>. +They say that will reduce one's curves."</p> + +<p>"Wow! And what would the girl say downstairs under me?" asked Jennie +Stone. "I'd begin by being the most unpopular girl in this freshman +class."</p> + +<p>These first few days were busy ones; but the girls of the freshman class +were fast learning just where they stood. Then happened something that +awoke most of the class to the fact that they needed to get together, +that they must, after all, take up cudgels for themselves.</p> + +<p>"Just like a flock of silly sheep, running together when they see a +dog," Helen at first said.</p> + +<p>"I guess there is a good reason in nature for sheep to do that," Ruth +said, on reflection. "Sheep fear wolves more than any other animal, and +a dog is a wolf, after all, only domesticated."</p> + +<p>"Huh!" grunted Jennie. "Then we are sheep and the seniors are wolves, +are they? I could eat up most of these seniors I've seen, myself. I will +be a savage sheep—woof! woof!"</p> + +<p>The matter that had made the disturbance, however, was not to be +ignored.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>A TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT</h3> + + +<p>Arrangements for the organization of the freshman class had lagged.</p> + +<p>This fact may have been behind the notice put upon the bulletin boards +all over the Ardmore grounds some time after bedtime one evening and +before the rising bell rang the next morning. It intimated a bit of +hazing, but hazing of a quality that the faculty could only wink at.</p> + +<p>The notice was as follows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>FRESHMEN</p> + +<p><i>It is the command of the Senior Class of Ardmore that no Freshman +shall appear within the college grounds wearing a tam-o'-shanter of +any other hue save the herewith designated color, to wit: Baby +Blue. This order is for the mental and spiritual good of the +incoming class of Freshmen. Any member of said class refusing to +obey this order will be summarily dealt with by the upper classes +of Ardmore.</i></p></div> + +<p>Groups gathered immediately after breakfast about the bulletin boards. +Of course, the seniors and juniors passed by with dignified bearing, and +without comment. The sophomores remained upon the outskirts of the +groups of excited freshmen to laugh and jeer.</p> + +<p>"A disturbed bumblebees' nest could have hummed no louder," Helen +declared, as the three friends walked up to chapel, which they made a +point of attending.</p> + +<p>"Why! to think of the <i>cheek</i> of those seniors!" ejaculated Jennie. "And +the juniors are just as bad!"</p> + +<p>"What are you going to do about that tam of yours, Heavy?" asked Ruth, +slily. "It's a gay thing—nothing like baby blue."</p> + +<p>"Oh well," growled the fleshy girl, "baby blue is one of my favorite +colors."</p> + +<p>"Mine, too," said Ruth, drily.</p> + +<p>"Oh, girls! Are you going to give right in—<i>so</i> easy?" gasped Helen.</p> + +<p>"I don't feel like making myself conspicuous," Ruth said. "You can wager +that most of our class will hustle right off and get the proper hue in +tams."</p> + +<p>"Then we'd better go to town this very afternoon," Jennie cried, in +haste, "and see if we can find three of baby blue shade. The stores will +be drained of them by to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"But to give—right—in!" wailed Helen, who dearly loved a fight.</p> + +<p>"No. It isn't that. But, as the advertisements say: 'Eventually, so why +not now?' We'll have to come to it. Let's get our tams while the +tamming's good."</p> + +<p>Helen could not see the reason for obeying the senior order; but she +could see no reason, either, for not following her chum's lead. The +three girls telephoned for a taxicab, which came to Dare Hall for them +at half past three.</p> + +<p>They were not the only girls going to town; but some of the freshmen, +like Helen, wished to display their independence and refused—as yet—to +obey the senior command.</p> + +<p>A line at the bottom of the notice announced that three days were +allowed the freshmen to obtain their proper tam-o'-shanters.</p> + +<p>"Three days!" gasped Heavy, as they started off in the little car. "Why, +it will take the stores in Greenburg two weeks to supply sufficient tams +of the proper color."</p> + +<p>"Then if we don't get ours," laughed Ruth, "we'd better go bareheaded +until the new tams can be sent us from home."</p> + +<p>"I won't do that!" cried the annoyed Helen. "Oh! oh!" she exclaimed, the +next moment, and before they were out of the grounds. "See Miss Frayne! +She has her scrambled-egg tam on."</p> + +<p>"Don't you suppose she has read the notice?" worried Ruth.</p> + +<p>"Why hasn't she?"</p> + +<p>"Well, she seems to flock together with herself so much. Nobody seems to +be chummy with her—yet," Ruth explained.</p> + +<p>"Now, old Mother Worry!" exclaimed Helen, "bother about <i>her</i>, will +you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, ma'am," said Ruth, demurely. "I shall, I suppose."</p> + +<p>"Goodness, Ruth!" cried Jennie.</p> + +<p>They discovered a rather strange thing when they arrived in Greenburg +and entered the first store that dealt in ladies' apparel. Oh, yes, +indeed! the proprietor had tam-o'-shanters of just the required shade, +baby blue. The friends bought immediately for fear some of the other +girls who had come to town would find these and buy the proprietor out.</p> + +<p>And then, prone to the usual feminine frailty, they went "window +shopping." And in every store seeking trade from the college girls they +found the baby blue tam-o'-shanters.</p> + +<p>"It's the most astonishing thing!" gasped Helen. "What do you suppose it +means? Did you ever see so many caps of one kind and color in all your +life?"</p> + +<p>"It is amazing," agreed Ruth. Yet she was reflective.</p> + +<p>Jennie began to laugh. "Wonder if the seniors are just helping out their +friends among the tradespeople? It looks as though the storekeepers had +bought a superabundance of baby blue caps and the seniors were putting +it up to us to save the stores from bankruptcy."</p> + +<p>Ruth, however, thought it must be something other than that. Was it that +the storekeepers had been notified by the senior "powers that be" to be +ready to supply a sudden large demand for tam-o'-shanters of that +particular hue?</p> + +<p>At least, one little Hebrew asked the three friends if they had already +bought their tam-o'-shanters. "For vy, I haf a whole case of your class +colors, ladies, that my poy iss opening."</p> + +<p>"What class color?" demanded Helen, grumpily enough.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mees! A peau-ti-ful plue!"</p> + +<p>"They're all doing it! They're all doing it!" murmured Jennie, +staggering out of the "emporium." "This is going to affect my brain, +girls. <i>Did</i> the seniors know the storekeepers had the tams in stock, or +have the storekeepers been put wise by our elder sisters at Ardmore?"</p> + +<p>"What's the odds?" finally laughed Helen, as they got into the waiting +car. "We've got <i>our</i> tams. I only hope there are enough to go around."</p> + +<p>The appearance of more than a score of baby-blue caps on the campus +before evening showed that our trio of freshmen were not the only +members of their class who considered it wise to obey the mandate of the +lordly seniors, and without question.</p> + +<p>The tempest in the teapot, however, continued to rage. Many girls +declared they had not come to Ardmore to "be made monkeys of."</p> + +<p>"No," May MacGreggor was heard to say. "Some of you were already +assisted by nature. But get together, freshies! Can't you read the +handwriting on the wall?"</p> + +<p>"We can read the typewriting on the billboards," sniffed Helen Cameron. +"Don't ask us to strain our eyesight farther."</p> + +<p>Perhaps this was really the intention behind the senior order—that the +entering girls should become more quickly riveted into a compact body. +How the rooms occupied by the more popular freshmen buzzed during the +next few days!</p> + +<p>Our trio of friends, Ruth, Helen and Jennie, had been in danger of +establishing a clique of three, if they had but known it. Now they were +forced to extend their borders of acquaintanceship.</p> + +<p>As they were three, and were usually seen about the study-room Ruth and +Helen had established, it was natural that other girls of their class on +that corridor of Dale Hall should flock to them. They thus became the +nucleus at this side of the campus of the freshman class. From +discussing the rule of the haughty seniors, the freshmen began to talk +of their own organization and the approaching election.</p> + +<p>Had Ruth allowed her friends to do so, there would have been started a +boom by Helen and Jennie Stone for the girl of the Red Mill for +president of the freshman class. This honor Ruth did not desire. There +were several girls whom she had noted already among her mates, older +than she, and who evidently possessed qualities for the position.</p> + +<p>Besides, Ruth Fielding felt that if she became unduly prominent at first +at Ardmore, girls like Edith Phelps would consider her a particularly +bright target. She told herself again, but this time in private, that +fame was not always an asset.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>THE ONE REBEL</h3> + + +<p>However much the natural independence of the freshmen balked at the +mandate promulgated by the seniors, baby-blue tam-o'-shanters grew more +numerous every hour on the Ardmore campus.</p> + +<p>The sophomores were evidently filled with glee; the juniors and seniors +smiled significantly, but said nothing. The freshmen had been put in +their place at once, it was considered. But the attack upon them had +made the newcomers eager for an organization of their own.</p> + +<p>"If we are going to be bossed this way—and it is disgraceful!—we must +be prepared to withstand imposition," Helen announced.</p> + +<p>So they began busily settling the matter of the organization of the +class and the choosing of its officers. Before these matters were +arranged completely, however, there was an incident of note.</p> + +<p>The freshmen, as a body, were invited to attend a sophomore "roar." It +was to be the first out-of-door "roar" of the year and occurred right +after classes and lectures one afternoon. The two lower classes scamped +their gymnasium work to make it a success.</p> + +<p>Now, a "roar" at Ardmore was much nicer than it sounds. It was merely an +open-air singing festival, and this one was for the purpose of making +the freshmen familiar with the popular songs of the college.</p> + +<p>Professor Leidenburg, the musical director, himself led the outdoor +concert. The sophomores stood in a compact body before the main entrance +to the college hall. Massed in the background, and in a half circle, +were the freshmen.</p> + +<p>The weather had become cool and all the girls wore their +tam-o'-shanters. For the first time it was noticeable how pretty the +pale blue caps on the freshmen's heads looked. And the new girls +likewise noted that most of the tam-o'-shanters worn-by their sophomore +hostesses were pale yellow.</p> + +<p>It was whispered then (and strange none of the freshmen had discovered +it before) that the class preceding theirs at Ardmore—the present +sophomores—had been forced to wear caps of a distinctive color, too. +These pale yellow ones were their old caps, left over from the previous +winter.</p> + +<p>The open-air assemblages of the college were made more attractive by +this scheme of a particular class color in head-wear.</p> + +<p>There was a blot in the assembly of the freshmen on this occasion. It +was not discovered in the beginning. Soon, however, there was much +whispering, and looking about and pointing.</p> + +<p>"Do you see <i>that</i>?" gasped Jennie, who had been straining her neck and +hopping up and down on her toes to see what the other girls were looking +at.</p> + +<p>"What <i>are</i> you rubbering at, Heavy?" demanded Helen, inelegantly.</p> + +<p>"Yes; what's all the disturbance?" asked Ruth.</p> + +<p>"That girl!" ejaculated the fleshy one.</p> + +<p>"What girl now? Any particular girl?"</p> + +<p>"She's not very particular, I guess," returned Jennie, "or she wouldn't +do it."</p> + +<p>"Jennie!" demanded Helen. "<i>Who</i> do <i>what</i>?"</p> + +<p>"That Frayne girl," explained her plump friend.</p> + +<p>Rebecca Frayne stood well back in the lines of freshmen. It could not be +said that she thrust herself forward, or sought to gain the attention of +the crowd. Nevertheless, among the mass of pale blue tam-o'-shanters, +her parti-colored one was very prominent.</p> + +<p>"Goodness!" gasped Ruth. "Doesn't she know better?"</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose she is one of those stubborn girls who just 'won't be +driv'?" giggled Helen.</p> + +<p>It was no laughing matter. The three days of grace written upon the +seniors' order regarding the caps had now passed. There seemed no good +reason for one member of the freshman class to refuse to obey the +command. Indeed, they had all tacitly agreed to do as they were +told—upon this single point, at least.</p> + +<p>"There certainly are enough of them left in town so that she can buy +one," Jennie Stone said.</p> + +<p>"Goodness!" snapped Helen. "If <i>my</i> complexion can stand such a silly +color, <i>hers</i> certainly can."</p> + +<p>Before the out-of-doors concert was over, news of this rebellion on the +part of a single freshman had run through the crowd like a breath of +wind over ripe wheat. It almost broke up the "roar."</p> + +<p>As the last verse of the last song was ended and the company began to +disperse, the freshmen themselves, and the sophomores as well, stared at +Rebecca Frayne in open wonder. She started for her room, which was in +Dare Hall on the same corridor as that of the three girls from +Briarwood, and Ruth and Helen and Jennie were right behind her.</p> + +<p>"That certainly is an awful tam," groaned Jennie. "What do you suppose +makes her wear it, anyway? Let alone the trouble——"</p> + +<p>She broke off. Miss Dexter, the first senior who had spoken to Ruth and +Helen coming over from the railway station on the auto-bus, stopped the +strange girl whose initials were the same as those of the girl of the +Red Mill.</p> + +<p>"Will you tell me, please, why you are wearing that tam-o'-shanter?" +asked Miss Dexter.</p> + +<p>Rebecca Frayne's head came up and a spot of vivid red appeared in either +of her sallow cheeks.</p> + +<p>"Is that <i>your</i> business?" she demanded, slowly.</p> + +<p>"Do you know that I am a senior?" asked Miss Dexter, levelly.</p> + +<p>"I don't care if you are two seniors," returned Rebecca Frayne, saucily.</p> + +<p>Miss Dexter turned her back upon the freshman and walked promptly away. +The listeners were appalled. None of them cared to go forward and speak +to Rebecca Frayne.</p> + +<p>"Cracky!" gasped Helen. "She's an awful spitfire."</p> + +<p>"She's an awful chump!" groaned Jennie. "The seniors won't do a thing to +her!"</p> + +<p>But nothing came at once of Rebecca's refusal to obey the seniors' +command regarding tam-o'-shanters. It was known, however, that the +executive committees of both the senior and junior classes met that next +night and supposedly took the matter up.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no! They don't haze any more at Ardmore," said Jennie, shaking her +head. "But just wait!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>RUTH IS NOT SATISFIED</h3> + + +<p>Ruth Fielding was not at all satisfied. Not that her experiences in +these first few weeks of college were not wholly "up to sample," as the +slangy Jennie Stone remarked. Ruth was getting personally all out of +college life that she could expect.</p> + +<p>The mere fact that a little handful of the girls looked at her somewhat +askance because of her success as a motion picture writer, did not +greatly trouble the girl of the Red Mill. She could wait for them to +forget her small "fame" or for them to learn that she was quite as +simple and unaffected as any other girl of her age. It was about Rebecca +Frayne that Ruth was disturbed in her mind. Here was the case of a +student who, Ruth believed, was much misunderstood.</p> + +<p>She could not imagine a girl deliberately making trouble for herself. +Rebecca Frayne by the expenditure of a couple of dollars in the purchase +of a new tam-o'-shanter might have easily overcome this dislike that had +been bred not alone in the minds of the girls of the two upper classes, +but among the sophomores and her own classmates as well. The sophomores +thought her ridiculous; the freshmen themselves felt that she was +bringing upon the whole class unmerited criticism.</p> + +<p>Ruth looked deeper. She saw the strange girl walk past her mates +unnoticed, scarcely spoken to, indeed, by the freshmen and ignored +completely by members of the other classes. And yet, to Ruth's mind, +there seemed to be an air about Rebecca Frayne—a look in her eyes, +perhaps—that seemed to beg for sympathy.</p> + +<p>It was no hardship for Ruth to speak to the girl and try to be friendly +with her. But opportunities for this were not frequent.</p> + +<p>In the first place Ruth's own time was much occupied with her studies, +her own personal friends, Helen and Jennie, and the new scenario on +which she worked during every odd hour.</p> + +<p>Several times Ruth went to the door of Rebecca's room and knocked. She +positively knew the girl was at home, but there had been no answer to +her summons and the door was locked.</p> + +<p>The situation troubled Ruth. When she was among her classmates, Rebecca +seemed nervously anxious to please and eager to be spoken to, although +she had little to say. Here, on the other hand, once alone in her room, +she deliberately shut herself away from all society.</p> + +<p>Soon after the outdoor song festival that had been so successful, and +immediately following the organization of the freshman class and its +election of officers, Ruth and Helen went over to the library one +evening to consult some reference books.</p> + +<p>The reference room was well filled with busy girls of all classes, who +came bustling in, got down the books they required, dipped into them for +a minute and then departed to their own studies, or else settled down to +work on their topics for a more extended period.</p> + +<p>It was a cold evening, and whenever a girl entered from the hall a +breath of frosty air came with her, and most of those gathered in the +room were likely to look up and shiver. Few of those assembled failed to +notice Rebecca Frayne when she came in.</p> + +<p>"Goodness! See who has came," whispered Helen.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Rebecca!" murmured Ruth, looking up as the girl in question crossed +the room.</p> + +<p>"Hasn't she the cheek of all cheeks to breeze in here this way?" Helen +went on to say with more force than elegance. "That awful tam again."</p> + +<p>One could not fail to see the tam-o'-shanter very well. It was +noticeable in any assembly.</p> + +<p>Perhaps half of the girls in the reference room were seniors and +juniors. Several of the members of the younger classes nodded to the +newcomer, though not many noticed her in this way.</p> + +<p>There was, however, almost immediately a general movement by the girls +belonging to the senior and junior classes. They got up grimly, put away +the books they were at work upon, and filed out, one by one, and without +saying a word.</p> + +<p>Helen stared after them, and nudged Ruth.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" asked her chum, who had been too busy to notice.</p> + +<p>"Did you see that?" asked Helen.</p> + +<p>"Did I see what?"</p> + +<p>"There isn't a senior or a jun left in the room. That—that's something +more than a coincidence."</p> + +<p>Ruth was puzzled. "I really wish you would explain," she said.</p> + +<p>Helen was not the only girl remaining who had noticed the immediate +departure of the members of the two older classes. Some of the +sophomores were whispering together. Rebecca's fellow-classmen glanced +at her sharply to see if she had noticed what had occurred.</p> + +<p>"I can't believe it," Ruth said worriedly, after Helen explained. "They +would not go out because she came in."</p> + +<p>The next day, however, the matter was more marked. Rebecca could sing; +she evidently loved singing. In the classes for vocal music there was +often a mixture of all grades, some of the seniors and juniors attending +with the sophomores and freshmen.</p> + +<p>Ruth Fielding, of course, never missed these classes. She hoped to be +noticed and have her voice tried out for the Glee Club. Professor +Leidenburg was to give a little talk on this day that would be helpful, +and the class was well attended.</p> + +<p>But when Rebecca Frayne came into the small hall just before the +professor himself appeared, there was a stir throughout the audience. +The girls, of course, were hatless here; but that morning Rebecca had +been seen wearing the "scrambled-egg tam," as Helen insisted upon +calling it.</p> + +<p>There was an intake of breath all over the room. Rebecca walked down the +aisle in search of an empty seat.</p> + +<p>And suddenly half the seats were empty. She could have her choice—and a +large one.</p> + +<p>"Goodness!" Helen gasped.</p> + +<p>Every senior and junior in the room had arisen and had left her seat. +Not a word had been spoken, nor had they glanced at Rebecca Frayne, who +at first was unaware of what it portended.</p> + +<p>The older girls filed out silently. Professor Leidenburg entered by the +door beside the organ just in time to see the last of them disappear. He +looked a bit surprised, but said nothing and took up the matter at hand +with but half an audience.</p> + +<p>Rebecca Frayne had seen and understood at last. She sat still in her +seat, and Ruth saw that she did not open her lips when, later, the +choruses were sung. Her face was very pale.</p> + +<p>Nobody spoke to her when the class was dismissed. This was not an +intentional slight on the part of her mates; simply, the girls did not +know what to say.</p> + +<p>The seniors and juniors were showing Rebecca that she was taboo. Their +attitude could not be mistaken. And so great was the influence of these +older girls of Ardmore upon the whole college that Rebecca walked +entirely alone.</p> + +<p>Ruth and Helen walked down the hill behind Rebecca that afternoon. Ruth +was very silent, while Helen buzzed about a dozen things.</p> + +<p>"I—I wonder how that poor girl feels?" murmured the girl of the Red +Mill after a while.</p> + +<p>"Cold, I imagine!" declared her chum, vigorously. "I'm half frozen +myself, Ruth. There's going to be a big frost to-night and the lake is +already skimmed over. Say, Ruth!"</p> + +<p>"Well?" asked her friend, absently.</p> + +<p>"Let's take our skates first thing in the morning down to that man who +sharpens things at the boathouse; will you?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<h3>THE GIRL IN THE STORM</h3> + + +<p>Ruth Fielding was quite as eager for fun between lessons as either Helen +or Jennie, and the prospect of skating on such a large lake as Remona +delighted her. The second day following the incident in the chorus +class, the ice which had bound Lake Remona was officially pronounced +safe.</p> + +<p>Gymnasium athletics lost their charm for those girls who were truly +active and could skate. There were luxurious damsels who preferred to be +pushed about in ice-chairs by more active girls or by hired attendants; +but our trio of friends did not look upon that as enjoyment.</p> + +<p>Even Jennie Stone was a vigorous skater. After a day or two on the ice, +when their ankles had become strong enough, the three made a circuit of +Bliss Island—and that was "some skate," to quote Jennie.</p> + +<p>The island was more than a mile from the boathouse, and it was five or +six miles in circumference. Therefore, the task was quite all of an +eight-mile jaunt.</p> + +<p>"But 'do or die' is our motto," remarked Helen, as they set forth on +this determined journey. "Let's show these pussy girls what it means to +have trained at Briarwood."</p> + +<p>"That's all right! that's all right!" grumbled Jennie. "But your motto +is altogether too grim and significant. Let's limit it. I want to <i>do</i> +if I can; but mercy me! I don't want to <i>die</i> yet. You girls have got to +stop and rest when I say so, or I won't go at all."</p> + +<p>Ruth and Helen agreed. That is why it took them until almost dinner-time +to encircle the island. Jennie Stone was determined to rest upon the +least provocation.</p> + +<p>"We'll be starved to death before we get back," Helen began to complain +while they were upon the south side of the island. "I should think you +would feel the pinch of privation, Heavy."</p> + +<p>"I do," admitted the other hollowly.</p> + +<p>"Well, why didn't you escape it by refusing to come, or else by bringing +a lunch?" demanded the black-eyed girl.</p> + +<p>"No. This is a part of the system," groaned Jennie.</p> + +<p>"What system, I'd like to know?" Ruth asked, in surprise.</p> + +<p>"System of martyrdom, I guess," sniffed Helen.</p> + +<p>"You've said it," agreed the plump girl. "That is the truest word yet +spoken. Martyrdom! that is what it means for me."</p> + +<p>"What means to you?" snapped Helen, exasperated because she could not +understand.</p> + +<p>"This dieting and exercising," Jennie said more cheerfully. "I +deliberately came so far and without food to see if I couldn't really +lose some weight. Do you know, girls, I am so hollow and so tired right +now, that I believe I must have lost a few ounces, anyway."</p> + +<p>"You ridiculous thing!" laughed Helen, recovering her good nature.</p> + +<p>"Should we sacrifice ourselves for your benefit, do you think, Jennie?" +Ruth asked.</p> + +<p>"Why not? 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' only more so. I need the +inspiration of you girls to help me," Jennie declared. "Do you know, +sometimes I am almost discouraged?"</p> + +<p>"About what?" asked Helen.</p> + +<p>"About my weight. I watch the bathroom scales with eagle eye. But +instead of coming down by pounds, I only fall by ounces. It is awfully +discouraging. And then," added the fleshy girl, "the other day when we +had such a scrumptuous dinner—was it Columbus Day? I believe so—I was +tempted to eat one of my old-time 'full and plenty' meals, and what do +you think?"</p> + +<p>"You had the nightmare," said Helen.</p> + +<p>"Not a chance! But I went up <i>two pounds and a half</i>—or else the scales +were crazy!"</p> + +<p>"Girls!" exclaimed Ruth, suddenly. "Do you know it is snowing?"</p> + +<p>"My! I never expected that," cried Helen, as a feathery flake lit upon +the very point of her pretty nose. "Ow!"</p> + +<p>"Well, we'd better go on, I guess," Ruth observed. "Put your best foot +forward, please, Miss Jennie."</p> + +<p>"I don't know which is my best foot now," complained the heavy girl. +"They are both getting lame."</p> + +<p>"We'll just have to make you sit down on the ice while we drag you," +announced Helen, increasing the length of her stroke.</p> + +<p>"Not much you won't!" exclaimed Jennie Stone, "I'm cold enough as it +is."</p> + +<p>"Shall we take off our skates and walk over the island, girls?" +suggested Ruth. "That will save some time and more than a little work +for Heavy."</p> + +<p>"Don't worry about me," put in Jennie. "I need the exercise. And walking +would be worse than skating, I do believe."</p> + +<p>It was snowing quite thickly now; but the shore of the island was not +far away. The trio hugged it closely in encircling the wooded and hilly +piece of land.</p> + +<p>"Say!" Helen cried, "we're not the only girls out here to-day."</p> + +<p>"Huh?" grunted Jennie, head down and skating doggedly.</p> + +<p>"See there, Ruth!" called the black-eyed girl.</p> + +<p>Ruth turned her face to one side and looked under the shade of her hand, +which she held above her eyes. There was a figure moving along the shore +of Bliss Island just abreast of them.</p> + +<p>"It's a girl," she said. "But she's not skating."</p> + +<p>"Who is it? A freshie?" asked Jennie, but little interested.</p> + +<p>Ruth did not reply. She seemed wonderfully interested by the appearance +of the girl on shore. She fell behind her mates while she watched the +figure.</p> + +<p>The snow was increasing; and that with the abruptly rising island, +furnished a background for the strange girl which threw her into relief.</p> + +<p>At first Ruth was attracted only by her figure. She could not see her +face.</p> + +<p>"Who can she be? Not one of the girls at Dare Hall——"</p> + +<p>This idea spun to nothingness very quickly. No! The figure ashore +reminded Ruth Fielding of nobody whom she had seen recently. The +feeling, however, that she knew the person grew.</p> + +<p>The snow blew sharply into the faces of the skating girls; but she on +shore was somewhat sheltered from the gale. The wind was out of the +north and west and the highland of the island broke the zest of the gale +for the strange girl.</p> + +<p>"And yet she isn't strange—I <i>know</i> she isn't," murmured Ruth Fielding, +casting another glance back at the figure on the shore.</p> + +<p>"Come on, Ruth! <i>Do</i> hurry!" cried Helen, looking back. "Even Heavy is +beating you."</p> + +<p>Ruth quickened her efforts. The strange girl disappeared, mounting a +path it seemed toward the center of the island. Ruth, head bent and lips +tightly closed, skated on intent upon her mystifying thoughts.</p> + +<p>The trio rounded the island at last. They got the wind somewhat at their +backs and on a long slant made for the boathouse landing. It was growing +dusk, but there was a fire at the landing that beckoned them on.</p> + +<p>"Glad it isn't any farther," Helen panted. "This snow is gathering so +fast it clogs one's skates."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I must be losing pounds!" puffed Jennie Stone. "I bet none of my +clothes will fit me to-morrow. I shall have to throw them all away."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Heavy!" giggled Helen. "That lovely new silk?"</p> + +<p>"Oh—well—I shall take <i>that</i> in!" drawled Jennie.</p> + +<p>"I've got it!" exclaimed Ruth, in a most startling way.</p> + +<p>"Goodness me! are you hurt?" demanded Helen.</p> + +<p>"What you got? A cramp?" asked Jennie, quite as solicitous.</p> + +<p>"I know now who that girl looked like," declared Ruth.</p> + +<p>"What girl?" rejoined Helen Cameron. "The one over yonder, on the other +side of the island?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. She looks just like that Maggie who came to the mill, Helen. You +remember, don't you? The girl I left to help Aunt Alvirah when I came to +college."</p> + +<p>"Well, for the land's sake!" said Jennie Stone. "If she's up there at +the Red Mill, how can she possibly be down here, too? You're talking out +of order, Miss Fielding. Sit down!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<h3>"OFT IN THE STILLY NIGHT"</h3> + + +<p>Ruth Fielding could not get that surprising, that almost unbelievable, +discovery out of her mind.</p> + +<p>It seemed ridiculous to think that girl could be Maggie, "the waif," she +had seen on Bliss Island. Aunt Alvirah had written Ruth a letter only a +few days before and in it she said that Maggie was very helpful and +seemed wholly content.</p> + +<p>"Only," the little old housekeeper at the Red Mill wrote, "I don't know +a mite more about the child now than I did when Mr. Tom Cameron and our +Ben brought her in, all white and fainty-like."</p> + +<p>The girls had to hurry on or be late to dinner. But the very first thing +Ruth did when she reached their rooms in Dare Hall was to look up Aunt +Alvirah's letter and see when it was dated and mailed.</p> + +<p>"It's obvious," Ruth told herself, "that Maggie could have reached here +almost as soon as the letter if she had wished to. But why come at all? +If it was Maggie over on that island, why was she there?"</p> + +<p>Of course, these ruminations were all in private. Ruth knew better than +to take her two close friends into her confidence. If she did the +mystery would have been the chief topic of conversation after dinner, +instead of the studies slated for that evening.</p> + +<p>An incident occurred, however, at dinner which served to take Ruth's +mind, too, from the mystery. There were a number of seniors and juniors +quartered at Dare Hall. Nor were all the seniors table-captains at +dinner.</p> + +<p>This evening the dining hall had filled early. Perhaps the brisk air and +their outdoor exercise had given the girls sharper appetites than usual. +It had the three girls from Briarwood. They were wearied after their +long skate around the island and as ravenous as wolves. They could +scarcely wait for Miss Comstock, at the head of their particular table, +to begin eating so they might do so, too.</p> + +<p>And just at this moment, as the pleasant bustle of dinner began, and the +lightly tripping waitresses were stepping hither and yon with their +trays, the door opened and a single belated girl entered the dining +hall.</p> + +<p>As though the entrance of this girl were expected, a hush fell over the +room. Everybody but Jennie looked up, their soup spoons poised as they +watched Rebecca Frayne walk down the long room to her place at the +housekeeper's table.</p> + +<p>"Sh!" hissed Helen, admonishing Jennie Stone.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter?" demanded the fleshy girl in surprise. "Is my soup +noisy? I'll have to train it better."</p> + +<p>But nobody laughed. All eyes were fastened on the girl who had made +herself so obnoxious to the seniors and the juniors of Ardmore. She sat +down and a waitress put her soup before her. Before poor Rebecca could +lift her spoon there was a stir all over the room. Every senior and +junior (and there were more than half a hundred in the dining hall) +arose, save those acting as table-captains or monitors. The rustle of +their rising was subdued; they murmured their excuses to the heads of +their several tables in a perfectly polite manner; and not a glance from +their eyes turned toward Rebecca Frayne. But as they walked out of the +dining hall, their dinners scarcely tasted, the slight put upon the +freshman who would not obey was too direct and obvious to be mistaken.</p> + +<p>Even Jennie Stone was at length aroused from her enjoyment of the very +good soup.</p> + +<p>"What do you know about <i>that</i>?" she demanded of Ruth and Helen.</p> + +<p>Ruth said not a word. To tell the truth she felt so sorry for Rebecca +Frayne that she lost taste for her own meal, hungry though she had been +when she sat down.</p> + +<p>How Rebecca herself felt could only be imagined. She had already shown +herself to be a painful mixture of sensitiveness and carelessness of +criticism that made Ruth Fielding, at least, wonder greatly.</p> + +<p>Now she ate her dinner without seeming to observe the attitude the +members of the older classes had taken.</p> + +<p>"Cracky!" murmured Jennie, in the middle of dinner. "She's got all the +best of it—believe me! The seniors and the juns go hungry."</p> + +<p>"For a principle," snapped the girl beside her, who chanced to be a +sophomore.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Jennie, smiling, "principles are far from filling. They're +a good deal like the only part of the doughnut that agreed with the +dyspeptic—the hole. Please pass the bread, dear. Somebody must have +eaten mine—and it was nicely buttered, too."</p> + +<p>"Goodness! nothing disturbs your calm, does it, Miss Stone?" cried +another girl.</p> + +<p>Few of the girls in the dining hall, however, could keep their minds or +their gaze off Rebecca Frayne. In whispers all through the meal she was +discussed by her close neighbors. Girls at tables farther away talked of +the situation frankly.</p> + +<p>And the consensus of opinion was against her. It was the general feeling +that she was entirely in the wrong. The very law which she had essayed +to flaunt was that which had brought the freshmen together as a class, +and was welding them into a homogeneous whole.</p> + +<p>"She's a goose!" exclaimed Helen Cameron.</p> + +<p>And perhaps this was true. It did look foolish. Yet Ruth felt that there +must be some misunderstanding back of it all. It should be explained. +The girl could not go on in this way.</p> + +<p>"First we know she'll be packing up and leaving Ardmore," Ruth said +worriedly.</p> + +<p>"She'll leave nobody in tears, I guess," declared one girl within +hearing.</p> + +<p>"But she's one of us—she's a freshman!" Ruth murmured.</p> + +<p>"She doesn't seem to desire our company or friendship," said another and +more thoughtful girl.</p> + +<p>"And she won't pack up in a hurry," drawled Jennie, still eating. +"Remember all those bags and that enormous trunk she brought?"</p> + +<p>"But, say," began Helen, slowly, "where are all the frocks and things +she was supposed to bring with her? We supposed she'd be the peacock of +the class, and I don't believe I've seen her in more than three +different dresses and only two hats, including that indescribably +brilliant tam."</p> + +<p>Ruth said nothing. She was thinking. She planned to get out of the +dining hall at the same time Rebecca did, but just as the dessert was +being passed the odd girl rose quickly, bowed her excuses to the +housekeeper, and almost ran out of the hall.</p> + +<p>"She was crying!" gasped Ruth, feeling both helpless and sympathetic.</p> + +<p>"I wager she bit her tongue, then," remarked Jennie.</p> + +<p>Ruth hurried through her dessert and left the dining hall ahead of most +of the girls. She glanced through the long windows and saw that it was +still snowing.</p> + +<p>"I wonder if that girl is over on the island yet?" she reflected as she +ran upstairs.</p> + +<p>Her first thought just then was of an entirely different girl. She went +to Rebecca's door and knocked. She knocked twice, then again. But no +answer was returned. No light came through the keyhole, or from under +the door; yet Ruth felt sure that Rebecca Frayne was in the room, and +weeping. It was a situation in which Ruth Fielding longed to help, yet +there seemed positively nothing she could do as long as the stubborn +girl would not meet her half way. With a sigh she went to the study she +and Helen jointly occupied.</p> + +<p>Before switching on the light she went to one of the windows that looked +out on the lake. Bliss Island was easily visible from this point. The +snow was still falling, but not heavily enough to obstruct her vision +much. The white bulk of the island rose in the midst of the field of +snow-covered ice. It seemed nearer than it ordinarily appeared.</p> + +<p>As Ruth gazed she saw a spark of light on the island, high up from the +shore, but evidently among the trees, for it was intermittent. Now it +was visible and again only a red glow showed there. She was still gazing +upon this puzzling light when Helen opened the door.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Ruthie!" she cried. "All in the dark? Oh! isn't the outside +world beautiful to-night?"</p> + +<p>She came to the window and put her arm about Ruth's waist.</p> + +<p>"See how solemnly the snow is falling—and the whole world is white," +murmured the black-eyed girl. "'Oft in the stilly night'——Or is it +'Oft in the silly night'?" and she laughed, for it was not often nor for +long that the sentiment that lay deep in Helen's heart rose to the +surface. "Oh! What's that light over there, Ruth?" she added, with quick +apprehension.</p> + +<p>"That is what I have been looking at," Ruth said.</p> + +<p>"But you don't tell me what it is!" cried Helen.</p> + +<p>"Because I don't know. But I suspect."</p> + +<p>"Suspect what?"</p> + +<p>"That it is a campfire," said Ruth. "Yes. It seems to be in one spot. +Only the wind makes the flames leap, and at one time they are plainly +visible while again they are partly obscured."</p> + +<p>"Who ever would camp over on Bliss Island on a night like this?" gasped +Helen.</p> + +<p>"I don't see why you put such mysteries up to me," returned Ruth, with a +shrug. "I'm no prophet. But——"</p> + +<p>"But what?"</p> + +<p>"Do you remember that girl we saw on the island this afternoon?"</p> + +<p>"Goodness! Yes."</p> + +<p>"Well, mightn't it be she, or a party she may be with?"</p> + +<p>"Campers on the island in a snow storm? No girls from this college would +be so silly," Helen declared.</p> + +<p>"I'm not at all sure she was an Ardmore girl," said Ruth, reflectively.</p> + +<p>"Who under the sun could she be, then?"</p> + +<p>"Almost anybody else," laughed Ruth. "It is going to stop snowing +altogether soon, Helen. See! the moon is breaking through the clouds."</p> + +<p>"It will be lovely out," sighed Helen. "But hard walking."</p> + +<p>Ruth gestured towards their two pairs of snowshoes crossed upon the +wall. "Not on those," she said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ruthie! Would you?"</p> + +<p>"All we have to do is to tighten them and sally forth."</p> + +<p>"Gracious! I'd be willing to be Sally Fifth for a spark of fun," +declared Helen, eagerly.</p> + +<p>"How about Heavy?" asked Ruth, as Helen hastened to take down the +snowshoes which both girls had learned to use years before at Snow Camp, +in the Adirondacks.</p> + +<p>"Dead to the world already, I imagine," laughed Helen. "I saw her to her +room, and I believe she was so tired and so full of dinner that she +tumbled into bed almost before she got her clothes off. You'd never get +her out on such a crazy venture!"</p> + +<p>Helen was as happy as a lark over the chance of "fun." The two girls +skilfully tightened the stringing of the shoes, and then, having put on +coats, mittens, and drawn the tam-o'-shanters down over their ears, they +crept out of their rooms and hastened downstairs and out of the +dormitory building.</p> + +<p>There was not a moving object in sight upon the campus or the sloping +white lawns to the level of the frozen lake. The two chums thrust their +toes into the straps of their snowshoes and set forth.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<h3>AN ODD ADVENTURE</h3> + + +<p>Six inches or more of snow had fallen. It was feathery and packed well +under the snowshoes. The girls sank about two inches into the fleecy +mass and there the shoes made a complete bed for themselves and the +weight of their wearers.</p> + +<p>"You know what I'd love to do this winter?" said Helen, as they trudged +on.</p> + +<p>"What, my dear?" asked Ruth, who seemed much distraught.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to try skiing. The slope of College Hill would be just +splendiferous for <i>that</i>! Away from the observatory to the lake—and +then some!"</p> + +<p>"We'll start a skiing club among the freshies," Ruth said, warmly +accepting the idea. "Wonder nobody has thought of it before."</p> + +<p>"Ardmore hasn't waked up yet to all its possibilities," said Helen, +demurely. "But this umpty-umph class of freshmen will show the college a +thing or two before we pass from out its scholastic halls."</p> + +<p>"Question!" cried Ruth, laughing. Then: "There! you can see that light +again."</p> + +<p>"Goodness! You're never going over to that island?" cried Helen.</p> + +<p>"What did we come out for?" asked Ruth. "And scamp our study hour?"</p> + +<p>"Goodness!" cried Helen, again, "just for <i>fun</i>."</p> + +<p>"Well, it may be fun to find out just who built that fire and what for," +said Ruth.</p> + +<p>"And then again," objected her chum, "it may be no fun at all, but +<i>serious</i>."</p> + +<p>"I have a serious reason for finding out—if I can," Ruth declared.</p> + +<p>"What is it, dear?"</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you later," said Ruth. "Follow me now."</p> + +<p>"If I do I'll not wear diamonds, and I may get into trouble," objected +Helen.</p> + +<p>"You've never got into very serious trouble yet by following my +leadership," laughed Ruth. "Come on, Fraid-cat."</p> + +<p>"Ain't! But we don't know who is over there. Just to think! A camp in +the snow!"</p> + +<p>"Well, we have camped in the snow ourselves," laughed Ruth, harking back +to an adventure at Snow Camp that neither of them would ever be likely +to forget.</p> + +<p>They scuffed along on the snowshoes, soon reaching the edge of the lake. +Nobody was about the boathouse, for the ice would have to be swept and +scraped by the horse-drawn machines before the girls could go skating +again.</p> + +<p>The moon was pushing through the scurrying clouds, and the snow had +ceased falling.</p> + +<p>"Look back!" crowed Helen. "Looks as though two enormous animals had +come down the hillside, doesn't it?"</p> + +<p>"The girls will wake up and view our tracks with wonder in the morning," +said Ruth, with a smile. "Perhaps they'll think that some curious +monsters have visited Ardmore."</p> + +<p>"That would cause more wonderment than the case of Rebecca Frayne. What +do you suppose is finally going to happen to that foolish girl?"</p> + +<p>"I really cannot guess," Ruth returned, shaking her head sadly. "Poor +thing!"</p> + +<p>"Why! she can't be <i>poor</i>," gasped Helen. "Look at all those trunks she +brought with her to Ardmore. And her dresses are tremendously +fancy—although we've not seen many of them yet."</p> + +<p>Ruth stared at her chum for a moment without replying. It was right +there and then that she came near to guessing the secret of Rebecca +Frayne's trouble. But she forbore to say anything about it at the time, +and went on beside her chum toward the white island, much disturbed in +her mind.</p> + +<p>Now and then they caught sight of the dancing flames of the campfire. +But when they were nearer the island, the hill was so steep that they +lost sight completely of the light.</p> + +<p>"Suppose it's a <i>man</i>?" breathed Helen, suddenly, as they began to climb +the shore of Bliss Island.</p> + +<p>"He won't eat us," returned Ruth.</p> + +<p>"No. They don't often. Only cannibals, and they are not prevalent in +this locality," giggled Helen. "But if it <i>is</i> a man——"</p> + +<p>"Then we'll turn around and go back," said Ruth, coolly. "I haven't come +out here to get acquainted with any male person."</p> + +<p>"Bluie! Suppose he's a real nice boy?"</p> + +<p>"There's no such an animal," laughed Ruth. "That is, not around here at +the present moment."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes. I see," Helen rejoined drily. "The nearest <i>nice</i> one is at the +Seven Oaks Military Academy."</p> + +<p>"So you say," Ruth said demurely. "But if it were Tom?"</p> + +<p>"Dear old Tom and some of his chums!" cried Helen. "Wouldn't it be +great? This Adamless Eden is rather palling on me, Chum. The other girls +have visitors, but our friends are too far away."</p> + +<p>"Hush!" advised Ruth. "Whoever it is up there will hear you."</p> + +<p>Helen was evidently not at all enamored of this adventure. She lagged +behind a little. Yet she would not allow Ruth to go on alone to +interview the mysterious camper.</p> + +<p>"I tell you what," the black-eyed girl said, after a moment and in a +whisper. "I believe that fire is up near the big boulder we looked +at—you remember? The Stone Face, do they call it?"</p> + +<p>"Quite possibly," Ruth rejoined briskly. "Come on if you're coming. I'm +sure the Stone Face won't hurt us."</p> + +<p>"Not unless it falls on us," giggled Helen.</p> + +<p>The grove of big trees that covered this part of the hillside was open, +and the chums very easily made their way toward the fire, even on +snowshoes. But the shoes naturally made some noise as they scuffed over +the snow, and in a minute Ruth stopped and slipped her feet out of the +straps, motioning Helen to do the same. They wore overshoes so there was +no danger of their getting their feet wet in the snow.</p> + +<p>Hand in hand, Ruth and Helen crept forward. They saw the fire flickering +just before them. There was a single figure between the fire and the +very boulder of which Helen had spoken.</p> + +<p>Reaching the edge of the grove the girls gazed without discovery at the +camp in the snow. The boulder stood in a small open space, and it was so +high and bulky that it sheltered the fire and the camper quite +comfortably. As Ruth had suspected, the latter was the girl she had seen +walking upon the southern shore of Bliss Island. She knew her by her +figure, if not by her face, which was at the moment hidden.</p> + +<p>"She's alone," whispered Helen, making the words with her lips more than +with her voice.</p> + +<p>"What <i>can</i> she be doing out here?" was the black-eyed girl's next +demand.</p> + +<p>Her chum put out a hand in a gesture of warning and at once walked out +of the shelter of the trees and approached the fire. Helen lingered +behind. After all, it was so strange a situation that she did not feel +very courageous.</p> + +<p>The moon had quite broken through the clouds now and as Ruth drew nearer +to the fire and the girl, her shadow was projected before her upon the +snow. The girl who looked like Maggie suddenly espied this shadow, +raised her head, and leaped up with a cry.</p> + +<p>"Don't be frightened, Maggie," said Ruth. "It's only us two girls."</p> + +<p>"My—my name is—isn't Maggie," stammered the strange girl.</p> + +<p>And sure enough, having once seen her closely, Ruth Fielding saw that +she was quite wrong in her identification. This was not the girl who had +drifted down the Lumano River to the Red Mill and taken refuge with Aunt +Alvirah.</p> + +<p>This was a much more assertive person than Maggie—a girl with plenty of +health, both of body and mind. Maggie impressed one as being mentally or +nervously deficient. Not so this girl who was camping here in the snow +on Bliss Island. Yet there was a resemblance to Maggie in the figure of +the stranger, and Ruth noted a resemblance in her features, too.</p> + +<p>"My goodness me!" she said, laughing pleasantly. "If you're not our +Maggie you look near enough like her to be her sister."</p> + +<p>"Well, I haven't any sister in that college," said the strange girl, +shortly. "You're from Ardmore, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Ruth said, Helen now having joined them. "And we saw your +light——"</p> + +<p>"My <i>what</i>?" demanded the camping girl, who was warmly, though plainly +dressed.</p> + +<p>"Your campfire. You see," explained Ruth, finding it rather difficult +after all to talk to this very self-possessed girl, "we skated around +the island to-day——"</p> + +<p>"I saw you," said the stranger gruffly. "There were three of you."</p> + +<p>"Yes. And I thought you looked like Maggie, then."</p> + +<p>"Isn't this Maggie one of you?" sharply demanded the stranger.</p> + +<p>"She's a girl whom—whom I know," Ruth said quickly. "A really nice +girl. And you do look like her. Doesn't she, Helen?"</p> + +<p>"Why—yes—something like," drawled Helen.</p> + +<p>"And did you have to come out here to see if I were your friend?" asked +the other girl.</p> + +<p>"When I saw the campfire—yes," Ruth admitted. "It seemed so strange, +you know."</p> + +<p>"What seemed strange?" demanded the girl, very tartly. It was plain that +she considered their visit an intrusion.</p> + +<p>"Why, think of it yourself," Ruth cried, while Helen sniffed audibly. "A +girl camping alone on this island—and in a snowstorm."</p> + +<p>"It isn't snowing now," said the girl, smiling grimly.</p> + +<p>"But it was when we saw the fire at first," Ruth hastened to say. "You +know yourself you would be interested."</p> + +<p>"Not enough to come clear out here—must be over a mile!—to see about +it," was the rejoinder. "I usually mind my own business."</p> + +<p>"So do we, you may be sure!" spoke up Helen, quick to take offence. +"Come away, Ruth."</p> + +<p>But the girl of the Red Mill was not at all satisfied. She said, +frankly:</p> + +<p>"I do wish that you would tell us why you are here? Surely, you won't +remain all night in this lonely place? There is nobody else on the +island, is there?"</p> + +<p>"I should hope not!" exclaimed the girl. "Only you two busybodies."</p> + +<p>"But, really, we came because we were interested in what went on here. +It seems so strange for a girl, alone——"</p> + +<p>"You've said that before," was the dry reply. "I am a girl alone. I am +here on my own business. And <i>that</i> isn't yours."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" ejaculated Helen, angrily.</p> + +<p>"Well, if you don't like being spoken to plainly, you needn't stay," the +strange girl flung at her.</p> + +<p>"I see that very well," returned Helen, tossing her head. "<i>Do</i> come +away, Ruth."</p> + +<p>"Ha!" exclaimed the strange girl, suddenly looking at Ruth more +intently. "Are you called Ruth?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Ruth Fielding is my name."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" and the girl's face changed in its expression and a little flush +came into her cheeks. "I've—I've heard of you."</p> + +<p>"Indeed! How?" cried Ruth, eagerly. She felt that this girl must really +have some connection with Maggie at the mill, she looked so much like +the waif.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said the other girl slowly, looking away, "I heard you wrote +picture plays. I saw one of them. That's all."</p> + +<p>Ruth was silent for a moment. Helen kept tugging at her arm and urging +her to go.</p> + +<p>"We—we can do nothing for you?" queried the girl of the Red Mill at +last.</p> + +<p>"You can get off the island—that's as much as I care," said the strange +girl, with a harsh laugh. "You're only intruding where you're not +wanted."</p> + +<p>"Well, I do declare!" burst out Helen again. "She is the most impolite +thing. <i>Do</i> come away, Ruthie."</p> + +<p>"We really came with the best intentions," Ruth added, as she turned +away with her chum. "It—it doesn't look right for a girl to be alone at +a campfire on this island—and at night, too."</p> + +<p>"I sha'n't stay here all night," the girl said shortly. "You needn't +fret. If you want to know, I just built the fire to get warm by before I +started back."</p> + +<p>"Back where?" Ruth could not help asking.</p> + +<p>"<i>That</i> you don't know—and you won't know," returned the strange girl, +and turned her back upon them.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<h3>WHAT WAS IN REBECCA'S TRUNK</h3> + + +<p>The two chums did not speak a word to each other until they had +recovered their snowshoes and set out down the rough side of Bliss +Island for the ice. Then Helen sputtered:</p> + +<p>"People like <i>that</i>! Did you ever see such a person? I never was so +insulted——"</p> + +<p>"Pshaw! She was right—in a way," Ruth said coolly. "We had no real +business to pry into her affairs."</p> + +<p>"Well!"</p> + +<p>"I got you into it. I'm sorry," the girl of the Red Mill said. "I +thought it really was Maggie, or I wouldn't have come over here."</p> + +<p>"She's something like that Maggie girl," proclaimed Helen. "<i>She</i> was +nice, I thought."</p> + +<p>"Maybe this girl is nice, taken under other circumstances," laughed +Ruth. "I really would like to know what she is over here for."</p> + +<p>"No good, I'll be bound," said the pessimistic Helen.</p> + +<p>"And another thing," Ruth went on to say, as she and her chum reached +the level of the frozen lake, "did you notice that pick handle?"</p> + +<p>"That what?" demanded Helen, in amazement.</p> + +<p>"Pickaxe handle—I believe it was," Ruth said thoughtfully. "It was +thrust out of the snow pile she had scraped away from the boulder. And, +moreover, the ground looked as though it had been dug into."</p> + +<p>"Why, the ground is as hard as the rock itself," Helen cried. "There are +six or eight inches of frost right now."</p> + +<p>"I guess that's so," agreed Ruth. "Perhaps that's why she built such a +big fire."</p> + +<p>"What <i>do</i> you mean, Ruth Fielding?" cried her chum.</p> + +<p>"I think she wanted to dig there for something," Ruth replied +reflectively. "I wonder what for?"</p> + +<p>When they had returned to Dare Hall and had got their things off and +were warm again, they looked out of the window. The campfire on the +island had died out.</p> + +<p>"She's gone away, of course," sighed Ruth. "But I would like to know +what she was there for."</p> + +<p>"One of the mysteries of life," said Helen, as she made ready for bed. +"Dear me, but I'm tired!"</p> + +<p>She was asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. Not so +Ruth. The latter lay awake some time wondering about the odd girl on the +island and her errand there.</p> + +<p>Ruth Fielding had another girl's troubles on her mind, however—and a +girl much closer to her. The girl on the island merely teased her +imagination. Rebecca Frayne's difficulties seemed much more important to +Ruth.</p> + +<p>Of course, there was no real reason for Ruth to take up cudgels for her +odd classmate. Indeed, she did not feel that she could do that, for she +was quite convinced that Rebecca Frayne was wrong. Nevertheless, she was +very sorry for the girl. The trouble over the tam-o'-shanter had become +the most talked-of incident of the school term. For the several +following days Rebecca was scarcely seen outside her room, save in going +to and from her classes.</p> + +<p>She did not again appear in the dining hall. How she arranged about +meals Ruth and her friends could not imagine. Then the housekeeper +admitted to Ruth that she had allowed the lonely girl to get her own +little meals in her room, as she had cooking utensils and an alcohol +lamp.</p> + +<p>"It is not usually allowed, I know. But Miss Frayne seems to have come +to college prepared to live in just that way. She is a small eater, +anyway. And—well, anything to avoid friction."</p> + +<p>"Of course," Ruth said to Helen and Jennie Stone, "lots of girls live in +furnished rooms and get their own meals—working girls and students. But +it is not a system generally allowed at college, and at Ardmore +especially. We shall hear from the faculty about it before the matter is +done with."</p> + +<p>"Well, we're not doing it," scoffed Jennie. "And that Rebecca Frayne is +behaving like a chump."</p> + +<p>"But how she does stick to that awful tam!" groaned Helen.</p> + +<p>"Stubborn as a mule," agreed Jennie.</p> + +<p>"I saw her with another hat on to-day," said Ruth, reflectively.</p> + +<p>"That's so! It was the one she wore the day she arrived," Helen said +quickly. "A summer hat. I wonder what she did bring in that trunk, +anyway? She has displayed no such charming array of finery as I +expected."</p> + +<p>Ruth did not discuss this point. She was more interested in the state of +Rebecca's mind, though, of course, there was not much time for her to +give to anything but her studies and regular duties now, for as the term +advanced the freshmen found their hours pretty well filled.</p> + +<p>Scrub teams for certain indoor sports had been made up, and even Jennie +Stone took up the playing of basketball with vigor. She was really +losing flesh. She kept a card tacked upon her door on which she set down +the fluctuations of her bodily changes daily. When she lost a whole +pound in weight she wrote it down in red ink.</p> + +<p>Their activities kept the three friends well occupied, both physically +and mentally. Yet Ruth Fielding could not feel wholly satisfied or +content when she knew that one of her mates was in trouble. She had +taken an interest in Rebecca Frayne at the beginning of the semester; +yet of all the freshmen Rebecca was the one whom she knew the least.</p> + +<p>"And that poor girl needs somebody for a friend—I feel it!" Ruth told +herself. "Of course, she is to blame for the situation in which she now +is. But for that very reason she ought to have somebody with whom to +talk it over."</p> + +<p>Ruth determined to be that confidant of the girl who seemed to wish no +associate and no confidant. She began to loiter in the corridors between +recitation hours and at odd times. Whenever she knocked on Rebecca's +door there was no reply. Other girls who had tried it quickly gave up +their sympathetic attentions. If the foolish girl wished for no friends, +let her go her own way. That became the attitude of the freshman class. +Of course, the sophomores followed the lead of the seniors and the +juniors, having as little to do with the unfortunate girl as possible.</p> + +<p>But the day and hour came at last when Ruth chanced to be right at hand +when Rebecca Frayne came in and unlocked her room door. Her arms were +full of small packages. Ruth knew that she had walked all the way to the +grocery store on the edge of Greenburg, which the college girls often +patronized.</p> + +<p>It had been a long, cold walk, and Rebecca's fingers were numb. She +dropped a paper bag—and it contained eggs!</p> + +<p>Now, it is quite impossible to hide the fact of a dropped egg. At +another time Ruth might have laughed; but now she soberly retrieved the +paper bag before the broken eggs could do much damage, and stepped into +the room after the nervous Rebecca.</p> + +<p>"Oh, thank you!" gasped the girl. "Put—put them down anywhere. Thank +you!"</p> + +<p>"My goodness!" said Ruth, laughing, "you can't put broken eggs down +<i>anywhere</i>. Don't you see they are runny?"</p> + +<p>"Never mind, Miss Fielding——"</p> + +<p>"Oh! you've a regular kitchenette here, haven't you?" said Ruth, +emboldened to look behind a curtain. "How cunning. I'll put these eggs +in this clean dish. Mercy, but they are scrambled!"</p> + +<p>"Don't trouble, Miss Fielding. You are very kind."</p> + +<p>"But scrambled eggs are pretty good, at that," Ruth went on, unheeding +the other girl's nervousness. "If you can only get the broken shells out +of them," and she began coolly to do this with a fork. "I should think +you would not like eating alone, Rebecca."</p> + +<p>The other girl stared at her. "How can I help it?" she asked harshly.</p> + +<p>"Just by getting a proper tam and stop being stubborn," Ruth told her.</p> + +<p>"Miss Fielding!" cried Rebecca, her face flushing. "Do you think I do +this for—for fun?"</p> + +<p>"You must. It isn't a disease, is it?" and Ruth laughed aloud, +determined to refuse to take the other's tragic words seriously.</p> + +<p>"You—you are unbearable!" gasped Rebecca.</p> + +<p>"No, I'm not. I want to be your friend," Ruth declared boldly. "I want +you to have other friends, too. No use flocking by one's self at +college. Why, my dear girl! you are missing all that is best in college +life."</p> + +<p>"I'd like to know what <i>is</i> best in college life!" burst out Rebecca +Frayne, sullenly.</p> + +<p>"Friendship. Companionship. The rubbing of one mind against another," +Ruth said promptly.</p> + +<p>"Pooh!" returned the startled Rebecca. "I wouldn't want to rub my mind +against some of these girls' minds. All I ever hear them talk about is +dress or amusements."</p> + +<p>"I don't think you know many of the other girls well enough to judge the +calibre of their minds," said Ruth, gently.</p> + +<p>"And why don't I?" demanded Rebecca, still with a sort of suppressed +fury.</p> + +<p>"We all judge more or less by appearances," Ruth admitted slowly. "I +presume <i>you</i>, too, were judged that way."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean, Miss Fielding?" asked Rebecca, more mildly.</p> + +<p>"When you came here to Ardmore you made a first impression. We all do," +Ruth said.</p> + +<p>"Yes," Rebecca admitted, with a slight curl of her lip. She was +naturally a proud-looking girl, and she seemed actually haughty now. "I +was mistaken for <i>you</i>, I believe."</p> + +<p>Ruth laughed heartily at that.</p> + +<p>"I should be a good friend of yours," she said. "It was a great sell on +those sophomores. They had determined to make poor little me suffer for +some small notoriety I had gained at boarding school."</p> + +<p>"I never went to boarding school," snapped Rebecca. "I never was +<i>anywhere</i> till I came to college. Just to our local schools. I worked +hard, let me tell you, to pass the examinations to get in here."</p> + +<p>"And why don't you let your mind broaden and get the best there is to be +had at Ardmore?" Ruth demanded, quickly. "The girls misunderstand you. I +can see that. We freshmen have got to bow our heads to the will of the +upper classes. It doesn't hurt—much," and she laughed again.</p> + +<p>"Do you think I am wearing this old tam because I am stubborn?" demanded +the other girl, again with that fierceness that seemed so strange in one +so young.</p> + +<p>"Why—aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Why do you wear it, then?" asked Ruth, wonderingly.</p> + +<p>"<i>Because I cannot afford to buy another!</i>"</p> + +<p>Rebecca Frayne said this in so tense a voice that Ruth was fairly +staggered. The girl of the Red Mill gazed upon the other's flaming face +for a full minute without making any reply. Then, faintly, she said:</p> + +<p>"I—I didn't understand, Rebecca. We none of us do, I guess. You came +here in such style! That heavy trunk and those bags——"</p> + +<p>"All out of our attic," said the other, sharply. "Did you think them +filled with frocks and furbelows? See here!"</p> + +<p>Ruth had already noticed the packages of papers piled along one wall of +the room. Rebecca pointed to them.</p> + +<p>"Out of our attic, too," she said, with a scornful laugh that was really +no laugh at all. "Old papers that have lain there since the Civil War."</p> + +<p>"But, Rebecca——"</p> + +<p>"Why did I do it?" put in the other, in the same hard voice. "Because I +was a little fool. Because I did not understand.</p> + +<p>"I didn't know just what college was like. I never talked with a girl +from college in my life. I thought this was a place where only rich +girls were welcome."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Rebecca!" cried Ruth. "That isn't so."</p> + +<p>"I see it now," agreed the other girl, shortly. "But we always have had +to make a bluff at our house. Since <i>I</i> can remember, at least. +Grandfather was wealthy; but our generation is as poor as Job's turkey.</p> + +<p>"I didn't want to appear poor when I arrived here; so I got out the old +bags and the big trunk, filled them with papers, and brought them along. +A friend lent me that car I arrived in. I—I thought I'd make a splurge +right at first, and then my social standing would not be questioned."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Rebecca! How foolish," murmured Ruth.</p> + +<p>"Don't say that!" stormed the girl. "I see that I started all wrong. But +I can't help it now," and suddenly she burst into a passion of weeping.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + +<h3>WHAT WAS IN REBECCA'S HEART</h3> + + +<p>It was some time before Ruth could quiet the almost hysterical girl. +Rebecca Frayne had held herself in check so long, and the bitterness of +her position had so festered in her mind, that now the barriers were +burst she could not control herself.</p> + +<p>But Ruth Fielding was sympathetic. And her heart went out to this lonely +and foolish girl as it seldom had to any person in distress. She felt, +too, did Ruth, as though it was partly her fault and the fault of the +other freshmen that Rebecca was in this state of mind.</p> + +<p>She was fearful that having actually forced herself upon Rebecca that +the girl might, when she came to herself, turn against her. But at +present Rebecca's heart was so full that it spilled over, once having +found a confidant.</p> + +<p>In Ruth Fielding's arms the unfortunate girl told a story that, if +supremely silly from one standpoint, was a perfectly natural and not +uncommon story.</p> + +<p>She was a girl, born and brought up in a quiet, small town, living in +the biggest and finest house in that town, yet having suffered actual +privations all her life for the sake of keeping up appearances.</p> + +<p>The Frayne family was supposed to be wealthy. Not as wealthy as a +generation or so before; still, the Fraynes were looked upon as the +leaders in local society.</p> + +<p>There was now only an aunt, Rebecca, a younger sister, and a brother who +was in New York struggling upward in a commission house.</p> + +<p>"And if it were not for the little Fred can spare me and sends me twice +a month, I couldn't stay here," Rebecca confessed during this long talk +with Ruth. "He's the best boy who ever lived."</p> + +<p>"He must be," Ruth agreed. "I'd be glad to have a brother like that."</p> + +<p>Rebecca had been hungry for books. She had always hoped to take a +college course.</p> + +<p>"But I was ignorant of everything," she sighed.</p> + +<p>Ruth gathered, too, that the aunt, who was at the nominal head of the +Frayne household, was also ignorant. This Aunt Emmy seemed to be an +empty-headed creature who thought that the most essential thing for a +girl in life was to be fancifully dressed, and to attain a position in +society.</p> + +<p>Aunt Emmy had evidently filled Rebecca's head with such notions. The +girl had come to Ardmore with a totally wrong idea of what it meant to +be in college.</p> + +<p>"Why! some of these girls act as waitresses," said Rebecca. "I couldn't +do <i>that</i> even to obtain the education I want so much. Oh! Aunt Emmy +would never hear to it."</p> + +<p>"It's a perfectly legitimate way of helping earn one's tuition," Ruth +said.</p> + +<p>"The Fraynes have never done such things," the other girl said +haughtily.</p> + +<p>And right there and then Ruth decided that Rebecca Frayne was going to +have a very hard time, indeed, at Ardmore unless she learned to look +upon life quite differently from the way she had been taught at home.</p> + +<p>Already Ruth Fielding had seen enough at Ardmore to know that many of +the very girls whose duties Rebecca scorned, were getting more out of +their college life than Rebecca Frayne could possibly get unless she +took a radically different view of life and its comparative values from +that her present standards gave her.</p> + +<p>The girls who were waitresses, and did other work to help pay for their +tuition or for their board were busy and happy and were respected by +their mates. In addition, they were often the best scholars in the +classes.</p> + +<p>Rebecca was wrong in scorning those who combined domestic service with +an attempt to obtain an education. But Ruth was wise enough to see that +this feeling was inbred in Rebecca. It was useless to try to change her +opinion upon it.</p> + +<p>If Rebecca were poverty-stricken, her purse could not be replenished by +any such means as these other girls found to help them over the hard +places. In this matter of the tam-o'-shanter, for instance, it would be +very difficult to help the girl. Ruth knew better than to offer to pay +for the new tam-o'-shanter the freshman could not afford to buy. To make +such an offer would immediately close the door of the strange girl's +friendship to Ruth. So she did not hint at such a thing. She talked on, +beginning to laugh and joke with Rebecca, and finally brought her out of +her tears.</p> + +<p>"Cheer up," Ruth said. "You are making the worst possible use of your +time here—keeping to yourself and being so afraid of making friends. +We're not all rich girls, I assure you. And the girls on this corridor +are particularly nice."</p> + +<p>"I suppose that may be. But if everywhere I go they show so plainly they +don't want me——"</p> + +<p>"That will stop!" cried Ruth, vigorously. "If I have to go to Dr. +Milroth myself, it shall be stopped. It is hazing of the crudest kind. +Oh! what a prettily crocheted table-mat. It's old-fashioned, but +pretty."</p> + +<p>"Aunty does that, almost all the time," Rebecca said, with a little +laugh. "Fred once said—in confidence, of course—that half the family +income goes for Aunt Emmy's wool."</p> + +<p>"Do <i>you</i> do it, too?" Ruth asked suspiciously.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes. I can."</p> + +<p>"Say! could you crochet one of these tams?" cried Ruth, eagerly.</p> + +<p>"Why—I suppose so," admitted the other girl.</p> + +<p>"Then, why not? Do it to please the seniors and juniors. It won't hurt +to bow to a custom, will it? And you only need buy a few hanks of wool +at a time."</p> + +<p>Rebecca's face flamed again; but she took the suggestion, after all, +with some meekness.</p> + +<p>"I <i>might</i> do that," she admitted.</p> + +<p>"All right. Then you'll be doing your part. And talk to the girls. Let +them talk to you. Come down to the dining-room for your meals again. You +know, the housekeeper, Mrs. Ebbets, will soon be getting into trouble +about you. Somebody will talk to Dr. Milroth or to some other member of +the upper faculty."</p> + +<p>"I suppose so," groaned Rebecca. "They won't let poor little me alone."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you can't expect to have your own way at school," cried Ruth, +laughing. "Oh, and say!"</p> + +<p>"Well, Miss Fielding?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Do</i> call me Ruth," begged the girl of the Red Mill. "It won't cost you +a cent more," but she said it so good-naturedly that Rebecca had to +laugh.</p> + +<p>"I will," said the other girl, vehemently. "You are the very nicest +little thing!"</p> + +<p>"Well, now that's settled," laughed Ruth, "do something for me, will +you?"</p> + +<p>"Any—anything I can," agreed Rebecca, with some doubt.</p> + +<p>"You know we girls on this corridor are going to have a sitting-room all +to ourselves. That corner room that is empty. Everybody is going to +buy—is going to give something to help furnish the room."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ruth! I can't——"</p> + +<p>"Yes you can," interrupted Ruth, quickly. "When you stop this foolish +eating by yourself, you can bring over your alcohol lamp. It's just what +we want to make tea on. Now, say you will, Rebecca!"</p> + +<p>"I—I will. Why, yes, I can do that," Rebecca agreed.</p> + +<p>"Goody! I'll tell the girls. And you'll be as welcome as the flowers in +May, lamp or no lamp," she cried, kissing Rebecca again and bustling out +of the room.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> + +<h3>BEARDING THE LIONS</h3> + + +<p>Ruth had shown a very cheerful face before Rebecca Frayne, but when she +was once out of the room the girl of the Red Mill did not show such a +superabundance of cheerfulness.</p> + +<p>She knew well enough that Rebecca had become so unpopular that public +opinion could not be changed regarding her in a moment.</p> + +<p>Besides, there were the two upper classes to be considered. Their order +regarding the freshmen's head-covering had been flagrantly disobeyed, +and would have to be disobeyed for some time to come. A girl cannot +crochet a tam-o'-shanter in a minute.</p> + +<p>Having undertaken to straighten out Rebecca Frayne's troubles, however, +Ruth did not publicly shrink from the task. She was one who made up her +mind quickly, and having made it up, set to work immediately to carry +the matter through.</p> + +<p>Merry Dexter, the first senior she had met upon coming to Ardmore, was +kindly disposed toward her, and Ruth knew that Miss Dexter was an +influential member of her class. Therefore, Ruth took her trouble—and +Rebecca's—directly to Miss Dexter.</p> + +<p>Yet, she did not feel that she had a right to explain, even to this one +senior, all that Rebecca Frayne had confided to her. She realized that +the girl, with her false standards of respectability and social +standing, would never be able to hold up her head at college if her real +financial situation were known to the girls in general. Ruth was bound, +however, to take Miss Dexter somewhat into her confidence to obtain a +hearing. She put the matter before the senior as nicely as possible, +saying in conclusion:</p> + +<p>"And she will knit herself a tam of the proper color just as soon as +possible. No girl, you know, Miss Dexter, likes to admit that she is +poor. It is dreadfully embarrassing. So I hope that this matter will be +adjusted without her situation being discussed."</p> + +<p>"Goodness! <i>I</i> can't change things," the senior declared. "Not unless +that girl agrees to do as she is told—like the rest of you freshies."</p> + +<p>"Then my opinion of your class, Miss Dexter," Ruth said firmly, "must be +entirely wrong. I did not believe that they ordered us to wear baby blue +tams just out of an arbitrary desire to make us obey. Had I believed +<i>that</i> I would not have bought a new tam myself!"</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't?"</p> + +<p>"No, Miss Dexter. Nor would a great many of us freshmen. We believed the +order had a deeper significance—and it <i>had</i>. It helped our class get +together. We are combined now, we are a social body. And I believe that +if I took this matter up with Rebecca's class, and explained just her +situation to them (which, of course, I do not want to do), the freshmen +as a whole would back me in a revolt against the upper classes."</p> + +<p>"You're pretty sure of that, Ruth Fielding, are you?" demanded the +senior.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am. We'd all refuse to wear the new tams. You seniors and +juniors would have a nice time sending us all to Coventry, wouldn't you? +If you didn't want to eat with us, you'd all go hungry for a long time +before the freshmen would do as Rebecca foolishly did."</p> + +<p>Miss Dexter laughed at that. And then she hugged Ruth.</p> + +<p>"I believe you are a dear girl, with a lot of good sense in your head," +she said. "But you must come before our executive committee and talk to +them."</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear! Beard the lions in their den?" cried Ruth.</p> + +<p>"Yes, my dear. I cannot be your spokesman."</p> + +<p>Ruth found this a harder task than she had bargained for; but she went +that same evening to a hastily called meeting of the senior committee. +Perhaps Miss Dexter had done more for her than she agreed, however, for +Ruth found these older girls very kind and she seemingly made them +easily understand Rebecca's situation without being obliged to say in +just so many words that the girl was actually poverty-stricken.</p> + +<p>And it was probable, too, that Ruth Fielding helped herself in this +incident as much as she did her classmate. The members of the older +classes thereafter gave the girl of the Red Mill considerably more +attention than she had previously received. Ruth began to feel surprised +that she had so many warm friends and pleasant acquaintances in the +college, even among the sophomores of Edith Phelps' stamp. Edith Phelps +found her tart jokes about the "canned-drama authoress" falling rather +flat, so she dropped the matter.</p> + +<p>Older girls stopped on the walks to talk to Ruth. They sat beside her in +chapel and at other assemblies, and seemed to like to talk with her. +Although Ruth did not hold an office in her own class organization, yet +she bade fair to become soon the most popular freshman at Ardmore.</p> + +<p>Ruth was perfectly unconscious of this fact, for she had not a spark of +vanity in her make-up. Her mind was so filled with other and more +important things that her social conquests impressed her but little. She +did, however, think a good bit about poor Rebecca Frayne's situation. +She warned her personal friends among the freshmen, especially those at +Dare Hall, to say nothing to Rebecca about the unfortunate affair.</p> + +<p>Rebecca came into the dining-room again. Ruth knew that she had actually +begun to crochet a baby blue tam-o'-shanter. But it was a question in +Ruth's mind if the odd girl would be able to "keep up appearances" on +the little money she had left and that which her brother could send her +from time to time. It was quite tragic, after all. Rebecca was sure of +good and sufficient food as long as she could pay her board; but the +girl undoubtedly needed other things which she could not purchase.</p> + +<p>Naturally, youth cannot give its entire attention to even so tragic a +matter as this. Ruth's gay friends acted as counterweights in her mind +to Rebecca's troubles.</p> + +<p>The girls were out on the lake very frequently as the cold weather +continued; but Ruth never saw again the strange girl whom she and Helen +had interviewed at night on Bliss Island.</p> + +<p>Hearing from Aunt Alvirah as she did with more or less frequency, the +girl of the Red Mill was assured that Maggie seemed content and was +proving a great help to the crippled old housekeeper. Maggie seemed +quite settled in her situation.</p> + +<p>"Just because that queer girl looked like Maggie doesn't prove that +Maggie knows her," Ruth told herself. "Still—it's odd."</p> + +<p>Stormy weather kept the college girls indoors a good deal; and the +general sitting-room on Ruth's corridor became the most social spot in +the whole college.</p> + +<p>The girls whose dormitory rooms were there, irrespective of class, all +shared in the furnishing of the sitting-room. Second-hand furniture is +always to be had of dealers near an institution like Ardmore. Besides, +the girls all owned little things they could spare for the general +comfort, like Rebecca Frayne's alcohol lamp.</p> + +<p>Helen had a tea set; somebody else furnished trays. In fact, all the +"comforts of home" were supplied to that sitting-room; and the girls +were considered very fortunate by their mates in other parts of the +hall, and, indeed, in the other three dormitory buildings.</p> + +<p>But during the holiday recess something happened that bade fair to +deprive Ruth and her friends of their special perquisite. Dr. McCurdy's +wife's sister came to Ardmore. The McCurdys did not keep house, +preferring to board. They could find no room for Mrs. Jaynes, until it +was remembered that there was an unassigned dormitory room at Dare Hall.</p> + +<p>Many of the girls had gone home over the brief holidays; but our three +friends from Briarwood had remained at Ardmore.</p> + +<p>So Ruth and Helen and Jennie Stone chanced to be among the girls present +when the housekeeper of Dare Hall came into the sitting-room and, to +quote Jennie, informed them that they must "vamoose the ranch."</p> + +<p>"That is what Ann Hicks would call it," Jennie said, defending her +language when taken to task for it. "We've just got to get out—and it's +a mean shame."</p> + +<p>Dr. McCurdy was one of the important members of the faculty. Of course, +the girls on that corridor had no real right to the extra room. All they +could do was to voice their disappointment—and they did that, one may +be sure, with vociferation.</p> + +<p>"And just when we had come to be so comfortably fixed here," groaned +one, when the housekeeper had departed. "I know I shall dis-<i>like</i> that +Mrs. Jaynes extremely."</p> + +<p>"We won't speak to her!" cried Helen, in a somewhat vixenish tone.</p> + +<p>"Maybe she won't care if we don't," laughed Ruth.</p> + +<p>But it was no laughing matter, as they all felt. They made a gloomy +party in the pretty sitting-room that last evening of its occupancy as a +community resort.</p> + +<p>"There's Clara Mayberry in her rocker again on that squeaky board," +Rebecca Frayne remarked. "I hope she rocks on that board every evening +over this woman's head who has turned us out."</p> + +<p>"Let's all hope so," murmured Helen.</p> + +<p>Jennie Stone suddenly sat upright in the rocker she was occupying, but +continued to glare at the ceiling. A board in the floor of the room +above had frequently annoyed them before. Clara Mayberry sometimes +forgot and placed her rocker on that particular spot.</p> + +<p>"If—if she had to listen to that long," gasped Jennie suddenly, "she +would go crazy. She's just that kind of nervous female. I saw her at +chapel this morning."</p> + +<p>"But even Clara couldn't stand the squeak of that board long," Ruth +observed, smiling.</p> + +<p>Without another word Jennie left the room. She came back later, so full +of mystery, as Helen declared, that she seemed on the verge of bursting.</p> + +<p>However, Jennie refused to explain herself in any particular; but the +board in Clara Mayberry's room did not squeak again that evening.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> + +<h3>A DEEP, DARK PLOT</h3> + + +<p>"Heavy is actually losing flesh," Helen declared to Ruth. "I can see +it."</p> + +<p>"You mean you <i>can't</i> see it," laughed her chum. "That is, you can't see +so much of it as there used to be. If she keeps on with the rowing +machine work in the gym and the basket ball practise and dancing, she +will soon be the thinnest girl who ever came to Ardmore."</p> + +<p>"Oh, never!" cried Helen. "I don't believe I should like Heavy so much +if she wasn't a <i>little</i> fat."</p> + +<p>People who had not seen Jennie Stone for some time observed the change +in her appearance more particularly than did her two close friends. This +was proved when Mr. Cameron and Tom arrived.</p> + +<p>For, as the girls did not go home for just a few days, Helen's father +and her twin unexpectedly appeared at college on Christmas Eve, and +their company delighted the chums immensely.</p> + +<p>On Friday evenings the girls could have company, and on all Saturday +afternoons, even during the college term. Also a girl could have a young +man call on her Sunday evening, provided he took her to service at +chapel.</p> + +<p>The three Briarwood friends had had no such company heretofore. They +made the most of Mr. Cameron and Tom, therefore, during Christmas week.</p> + +<p>There was splendid sleighing, and the skating on the lake was at its +very best. Ruth insisted upon including Rebecca Frayne in some of their +parties, and Rebecca proved to be good fun.</p> + +<p>Tom stared at Jennie Stone, round-eyed, when first he saw her.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with you, Tom Cameron?" the fleshy girl asked, rather +tartly. "Didn't you ever see a good-looking girl before?"</p> + +<p>"But say, Jennie!" he cried, "are you going into a decline?"</p> + +<p>"I decline to answer," she responded. But she dimpled when she said it, +and evidently considered Tom's rather blunt remark a compliment.</p> + +<p>The Christmas holidays were over all too soon, it seemed to the girls. +Yet they took up the class work again with vigor.</p> + +<p>Their acquaintanceship was broadening daily, both in the student body +and among the instructors. Most of the strangeness of this new college +world had worn off. Ruth and Helen and Jennie were full-fledged +"Ardmores" now, quite as devoted to the college as they had been to dear +old Briarwood.</p> + +<p>After New Year's there was a raw and rainy spell that spoiled many of +the outdoor sports. Practice in the gymnasium increased, and Helen said +that Jennie Stone was bound to work herself down to a veritable shadow +if the bad weather continued long.</p> + +<p>Ruth was in Rebecca's room one dingy, rainy afternoon, having skipped +gymnasium work of all kind for the day. The proprietor of the room had +finished her baby blue cap and had worn it the first time that week.</p> + +<p>"I feel that they are not all staring at me now," she confessed to Ruth.</p> + +<p>Ruth was at the piles of old papers which Rebecca had hidden under a +half-worn portierre she had brought from home.</p> + +<p>"Do you know," the girl of the Red Mill said reflectively, "these old +things are awfully interesting, Becky?"</p> + +<p>"What old things?"</p> + +<p>"These papers. I've opened one bundle. They were all printed in Richmond +during the Civil War. Why, paper must have been awfully scarce then. +Some of these are actually printed on wrapping paper—you can scarcely +read the print."</p> + +<p>"Ought to look at those Charleston papers," said Rebecca, carelessly. +"There are full files of those, too, I believe. Why, some of them are +printed on wall paper."</p> + +<p>"No!"</p> + +<p>"Yes they are. Ridiculous, wasn't it?"</p> + +<p>Ruth sat silent for a while. Finally she asked:</p> + +<p>"Are you sure, Becky, that you have quite complete files here of this +Richmond paper? For all the war time, I mean?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. And of the South Carolina paper, too. Father collected them during +and immediately following the war. He was down there for years, you +see."</p> + +<p>"I see," Ruth said quietly, and for a long time said nothing more.</p> + +<p>But that evening she wrote several letters which she did not show Helen, +and took them herself to the mailbag in the lower hall.</p> + +<p>Before this, Mrs. Jaynes, Dr. McCurdy's sister-in-law, was settled in +the room which had formerly been used by the girls as their own +particular sitting-room. She was not an attractive woman at all; so it +was not hard for her youthful associates on that corridor of Dare Hall +to declare war upon Mrs. Jaynes.</p> + +<p>Indeed, without having been introduced to a single girl there, Mrs. +Jaynes eyed them all as though she suspected they belonged to a tribe of +Bushmen.</p> + +<p>Naturally, during hours of relaxation, and occasionally at other times, +the girls joked and laughed and raced through the halls and sang and +otherwise acted as a crowd of young people usually act.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Jaynes was plainly of that sort that believes that all youthfulness +and ebullition of spirits should be suppressed. Luckily, she met the +girls but seldom—only when she was going to and from her room. On +stormy days she remained shut up in her apartment most of the time, and +Mrs. Ebbetts sent a maid up with her tray at meal time. She never ate in +the Dare Hall dining-room.</p> + +<p>Meantime, Jennie Stone had several mysterious sessions with certain of +the girls who felt quite as she did regarding the usurpation of Dr. +McCurdy's sister-in-law of the spare room. Had Ruth not been so busy in +other directions she would have realized that a plot of some kind was in +process of formation, for Helen was in it, as well.</p> + +<p>Jennie Stone had made a friend of Clara Mayberry on the floor above. In +fact, a number of the girls on the lower corridor affected by the +presence of Mrs. Jaynes, were in and out of Clara's room all day long. +None of these girls remained long at a time—not more than half an hour; +but another visitor always appeared before the first left, right through +the day, from breakfast call till "lights out." And after retiring hour +there began to be seen figures stealing through the corridors and on the +stairway between the two floors. That is, there would have been seen +such ghostly marauders had there been anybody to watch.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Jaynes crossly complained to Mrs. Ebbetts that she was kept awake +all night long—and all day, for that matter! But as she never put her +head out of her room after the lights were lowered in the corridors, she +did not discover the soft-footed spectres of the night.</p> + +<p>"But," she complained to Mrs. Ebbetts, "it is the noisiest room I ever +was in. Such a squeaking you never heard! And all the time, day and +night."</p> + +<p>"I do not understand that at all," said the puzzled housekeeper.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to know how the girl who had that room before I took it, stood +that awful squeaking noise," said the visitor.</p> + +<p>"Why, Mrs. Jaynes," said the housekeeper, "no girl slept there. It was a +sitting-room."</p> + +<p>"Even so, I cannot understand how anybody could endure the noise. If I +believed in such things I should declare the room was haunted."</p> + +<p>"Indeed, Madam!" gasped the housekeeper. "I do not understand it."</p> + +<p>"Well, I cannot endure it. I shall tell my sister that I cannot remain +here at Ardmore unless she finds me other lodgings. That awful <i>squeak, +squeak, squeak</i> continues day and night. It is unbearable."</p> + +<p>In the end, Dr. McCurdy found lodgings for his sister-in-law in +Greenburg. The girls of Ruth's corridor were delighted, and that night +held a regular orgy in the recovered sitting-room.</p> + +<p>"Thank goodness!" sighed Jennie Stone, "no more up and down all night +for us, either. We may sleep in peace, as well as occupy the room in +peace."</p> + +<p>"What <i>do</i> you mean, Heavy?" demanded Ruth.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ruthie! That's one time we put one over on you, dear," said the +fleshy girl sweetly. "You were not asked to join in the conspiracy. We +feared your known sympathetic nature would revolt."</p> + +<p>"But explain!"</p> + +<p>"Why, Clara let us use her rocking chair," Jennie said demurely. "It's a +very nice chair. We all rocked in it, one after another, half-hour +watches being assigned——"</p> + +<p>"Not at night?" cried the horror-stricken Ruth.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes. All day and all night. Every little minute that rocker was +going upon the squeaky board. It's a wonder the board is not worn out," +chuckled the wicked Jennie.</p> + +<p>"Well, I never!" proclaimed Ruth, aghast. "What won't you think of next, +Jennie Stone?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I know I'm awfully smart," sighed Jennie. "I did so much +of the rocking myself, however, that I don't much care if I never see a +rocking-chair again."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2> + +<h3>TWO SURPRISES</h3> + + +<p>Ruth Fielding knew that Rebecca Frayne was painfully embarrassed for +money. She managed to find the wherewithal for her board, and her +textbooks of course had been paid for at the beginning of the college +year. But there are always incidentals and unforeseen small expenses, +which crop up in a most unexpected manner and clamor for payment.</p> + +<p>Rebecca never opened her lips about these troubles, despite the fact +that she loved Ruth and was much with the girl of the Red Mill. But Ruth +was keen-eyed. She knew that Rebecca suffered for articles of clothing. +She saw that her raiment was becoming very, very shabby.</p> + +<p>The girl in this trouble was foolish, of course. But foolishness is a +disease not so easily cured. There was not the slightest chance of +giving Rebecca anything that she needed; Ruth knew that quite well. Her +finery—and cheap enough it was—the girl would flaunt to the bitter +end.</p> + +<p>Deep down she was a good girl in every respect; but she did put on airs +and ape the wealthy girls she saw. What garments she owned had been +ultra-fashionable in cut, if poor in texture, when she had come to +college. But fashions change so frequently nowadays that already poor +Rebecca Frayne was behind the styles—and she knew it and grieved +bitterly.</p> + +<p>Most of her mates at Dare Hall, the freshmen especially, usually dressed +in short cloth skirts and middy blouses, with a warm coat over all in +cold weather. Would Rebecca be caught going to classes in such an +outfit? Not much! That was why her better clothes wore out so quickly +and now looked so shabby. Jennie Stone said, with disgust, and with more +than a little truth, perhaps:</p> + +<p>"That girl primps to go to recitations just as though she were bound for +a party. I don't see how she finds time for study."</p> + +<p>Ruth realized that Rebecca was made that way, and that was all there was +to it. She wasted no strength, nor did she run the risk of being bad +friends with the unwise girl, by criticising these silly things. Ruth +believed in being helpful, or else keeping still.</p> + +<p>Rebecca could never be induced to try to do the things that other poor +girls did at college to help pay their expenses. Perhaps she was not +really fitted for such services, and would only have failed.</p> + +<p>Other girls acted as waitresses, did sewing, one looked after the linen +for one of the dormitories, another darned hose and repaired lingerie. +Dr. Frances Milroth's own personal secretary was a junior who was +working her way through Ardmore and was taking a high mark, too, in her +studies.</p> + +<p>One girl helped Mrs. Leidenburg with her children during several hours +of each day. Some girls were agents for articles which their college +mates were glad to secure easily and quickly.</p> + +<p>Indeed, the field of endeavor seemed rather well covered, and it would +have been hard to discover anything new for Rebecca Frayne to do, had +the girl even been willing to "go into trade," a thing Rebecca had told +Ruth a Frayne had never done.</p> + +<p>This attitude of the Frayne family seemed quite ridiculous to Ruth, but +she knew it was absolutely useless to scold Rebecca.</p> + +<p>Indeed, it was not Ruth Fielding's way to be a scold. If she could not +be helpful she preferred to ignore that which she saw was wrong. And in +Rebecca Frayne's case she was determined to be helpful if she could. +Rebecca was a bright scholar. After all, she would shine in her class +before all was said and done. They could not afford to lose such a +really bright girl from among the freshmen.</p> + +<p>Often on stormy days Ruth spent the time between recitations and dinner +in Rebecca's room.</p> + +<p>"I never saw anybody so fond of old papers as you are, Ruthie," Rebecca +said. "Do take 'em all if you like. Of course, I'll never be silly +enough to carry them back home with me. They are only useful to help +build the fire."</p> + +<p>"Don't dare destroy one of them, Rebecca Frayne!" Ruth had warned +her—and actually made her promise that she would not do so.</p> + +<p>Then the replies to Ruth's letters came. She had gone all through the +bundles of papers by this time, arranged them according to their dates +of issue, and wrapped the different years' issues in strong paper. +Rebecca could not see for the life of her, she said, what Ruth was +about.</p> + +<p>"Surely they can't be worth much as old paper, Ruthie. I know you are a +regular little business woman; but junk men aren't allowed on the +college grounds."</p> + +<p>"Expressmen are, my dear," laughed Ruth.</p> + +<p>"What do you mean? What <i>are</i> you going to do with those papers?"</p> + +<p>"You said you didn't care——"</p> + +<p>"And I don't. They are yours to do with as you please," said the +generous Rebecca Frayne.</p> + +<p>"To punish you," Ruth said seriously, "I ought really to take you at +your word," and she shook her head.</p> + +<p>"What meanest thou, my fair young lady?" asked Rebecca, laughing.</p> + +<p>"Read this," commanded Ruth, handing her, with the air of the stage hero +"producing the papers," one of the letters she had received. "Cast your +glance over this, Miss Frayne."</p> + +<p>The other received the letter curiously, and read it with dawning +surprise. She read it twice and then gazed at Ruth with almost +speechless amazement.</p> + +<p>"Well! what do you think of your Aunt Ruth <i>now</i>?" demanded the girl of +the Red Mill, laughing.</p> + +<p>"It—it can't be <i>so</i>, Ruthie!" murmured Rebecca Frayne, the hand which +held the letter fairly shaking.</p> + +<p>"It's just as <i>so</i> as it can be," and Ruth continued to laugh.</p> + +<p>The tears suddenly flooded into Rebecca's eyes. She could not turn +quickly enough to hide them from Ruth's keen vision. But all she said +was:</p> + +<p>"Well, Ruthie! I congratulate you. Think of it! Two hundred dollars +offered for each set of those old papers. Well!"</p> + +<p>"You see, it would scarcely have been wise to have built the fire with +them," Ruth said drily.</p> + +<p>"I—I should say not. And—and they have lain in our attic for years."</p> + +<p>"And you brought them to college as waste paper," Ruth added.</p> + +<p>Rebecca was silent. Ruth, smiling roguishly, stole up behind her. +Suddenly she put both arms around Rebecca Frayne and hugged her tight.</p> + +<p>"Becky! Don't you understand?" she cried.</p> + +<p>"Understand what?" Rebecca asked gruffly, trying to dash away her few +tears.</p> + +<p>"Why, honey, I did it for <i>you</i>. I believed the papers must be worth +something. I had heard of a set of New York illustrated papers for the +years of the Civil War selling for a big price. These, I believed, must +be even more interesting to collectors of such things.</p> + +<p>"So I wrote to Mr. Cameron, and he sent me the names of old book +dealers, and <i>they</i> sent me the addresses of several collectors. This +Mr. Radley has a regular museum of such things, and he offers the best +price—four hundred dollars for the lot if they prove to be as perfect +as I said they were. And they <i>are</i>."</p> + +<p>"Yes—but——"</p> + +<p>"And, of course, the money is yours, Rebecca," said Ruth, promptly. "You +don't for a moment suppose that I would take your valuable papers and +cheat you out of the reward just because I happened to know more about +their worth than you did? What do you take me for?"</p> + +<p>"Oh—oh, Ruthie!"</p> + +<p>"What do you take me for?" again demanded Ruth Fielding, quite as though +she were offended.</p> + +<p>"For the best and dearest girl who ever lived!" cried Rebecca Frayne, +and cast herself upon Ruth's breast, holding her tightly while she +sobbed there.</p> + +<p>This was one surprise. But there was another later, and this was a +surprise for Ruth herself.</p> + +<p>She was very glad to have been the means of finding Rebecca such a nice +little fortune as this that came to her for the old periodicals. With +what the girl's brother could send her, Rebecca would be pretty sure of +sufficient money to carry her through her freshman year and pay for her +second year's tuition at Ardmore.</p> + +<p>"Something may be found then for Rebecca to do," thought Ruth, "that +will not so greatly shock her notions of gentility. Dear me! she's as +nice a girl as ever lived; but she is a problem."</p> + +<p>Ruth had other problems, however, on her mind. One of these brought +about the personal surprise mentioned above. She had found time finally +to complete the scenario of "Crossed Wires," and after some changes had +been made in it, Mr. Hammond had informed her that it would be put in +the hands of a director for production. It called for so many outdoor +scenes, however, that the new film would not be made until spring.</p> + +<p>Spring was now fast approaching, and Ruth determined to be at the Red +Mill on a visit when the first scenes were taken for her photo-drama.</p> + +<p>Of course, if she went, Helen must go. They stood excellently well in +all their classes, and it was not hard to persuade Dr. Milroth, who had +good reports of both freshmen, to let them go to Cheslow.</p> + +<p>Ruth's coming home was in the nature of a surprise to Uncle Jabez and +Aunt Alvirah. The old housekeeper was outspoken in her joy at seeing +"her pretty" once more. Uncle Jabez was startled into perhaps a warmer +greeting of his niece than he ordinarily considered advisable.</p> + +<p>"I declare for't, Ruth! Ain't nothin' the matter, is there?" he asked, +holding her hand and staring into her face with serious intent.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, Uncle. Nothing at all the matter. Just ran home to see how you +all were, and to watch them take the pictures of the old mill."</p> + +<p>"Ain't lost any of that money, have ye?" persisted the miller.</p> + +<p>"Not a penny. And Mr. Hammond sent me a nice check on account of +royalties, too," and she dimpled and laughed at him.</p> + +<p>"All right," grunted Uncle Jabez. "Ye wanter watch out for that there +money. Business is onsartain. Ain't no knowin' when everything'll go to +pot <i>here</i>. I never see the times so hard."</p> + +<p>But Ruth was not much disturbed by such talk. Uncle Jabez had been +prophesying disaster ever since she had known him.</p> + +<p>Maggie welcomed Ruth cordially, as well as Ben. Maggie was still the +puzzling combination of characteristics that she had seemed to Ruth from +the first. She was willing to work, and was kind to Aunt Alvirah; but +she always withdrew into herself if anybody tried to talk much to her.</p> + +<p>The others at the Red Mill had become used to the girl's reticence; but +to Ruth it remained just as tantalizing. She had the feeling that Maggie +was by no means in her right environment.</p> + +<p>"Doesn't she ever write letters?" Ruth asked Aunt Alvirah. "Doesn't she +ever have a visitor?"</p> + +<p>"Why, bless ye, my pretty! I don't know as she writes much," Aunt +Alvirah said, as she moved about the kitchen in her old slow fashion. +"Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! Well Ruthie, she reads a lot. She's all +for books, I guess, like you be. But she don't never talk much. And a +visitor? Why, come to think on't, she did have one visitor."</p> + +<p>"Is that so?" cried the curious Ruth. "Let's hear about it. I feel +gossipy, Aunt Alvirah," and she laughed.</p> + +<p>She knew that Maggie was away from the house, and they were alone. She +could trust Aunt Alvirah to say nothing to the girl regarding her +queries.</p> + +<p>"Yes, my pretty," the old woman said, "she did have one visitor. Another +gal come to see her the very week you went away to college, Ruthie."</p> + +<p>"Is that so? Who was she?"</p> + +<p>"Maggie didn't say. I didn't ask her. Ye see, she ain't one ter confide +in a body," explained Aunt Alvirah, shaking her head and lowering +herself into her rocking chair. "Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!"</p> + +<p>"But didn't you see this visitor?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, Ruthie. I seen her. It was funny, too," Aunt Alvirah said, +shaking her head. "I meant to write to you about it; then I forgot.</p> + +<p>"I hears somebody knock on the door one day, and I opened the door and +there I declare stood Maggie herself. Or, I thought 'twas her."</p> + +<p>"What?" gasped Ruth, very much interested.</p> + +<p>"She looked a sight like her," said Aunt Alvirah, laughing to herself at +the remembrance. "Yet I knowed Maggie had gone upstairs to make the +beds, and this here girl who had knocked on the door was all dressed +up."</p> + +<p>"'Why, Maggie!' says I. And she says, kinder tart-like:</p> + +<p>"'I ain't Maggie. But I want to see her.'</p> + +<p>"So I axed her in; but she wouldn't come. I seen then maybe she was a +little younger than Maggie is. Howsomever I called to Maggie, and she +went out, and the two of 'em walked up and down the road for an hour. +The other gal never come in. And I seen her start back toward Cheslow. +Maggie never said no word about her from that day to this.</p> + +<p>"Do you know what I think about it, Ruthie?" concluded Aunt Alvirah.</p> + +<p>"No, Aunt Alvirah," said the girl of the Red Mill, reflectively.</p> + +<p>"I think that was Maggie's sister. Maybe she works out for somebody in +Cheslow."</p> + +<p>Ruth merely nodded. She did not think much of that phase of the matter. +What she was really puzzling over was her memory of the girl she and +Helen had interviewed on the island in Lake Remona before the Christmas +holidays.</p> + +<p>That girl had looked very much like Maggie, too!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2> + +<h3>MANY THINGS HAPPEN</h3> + + +<p>It was, of course, hard to tell by merely seeing them taken what the +pictures about the old Red Mill would be like; but Ruth and Helen both +acted in them as "extras" and were greatly excited over the film, one +may be sure.</p> + +<p>The director, not the cross Mr. Grimes this time, assured Ruth that he +was confident "Crossed Wires" would make good on the screen. Hazel Gray +played the lead in the picture, as she had in "The Heart of a School +Girl," and Ruth and Helen were glad to meet the bright little screen +actress again.</p> + +<p>Miss Gray seemed to have forgotten all about Tom Cameron and Ruth, for +some reason, felt glad. She ventured to ask Helen if her twin was still +as enamored of the young actress as he had seemed to be the year before.</p> + +<p>"Why, no," Helen said thoughtfully. "You know how it is with boys; they +have one craze after another, Ruthie."</p> + +<p>"No. Do they?" asked the other.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Tom made a collection of the photographs of a slap-stick comedian +at first. Then he decorated his room at Seven Oaks with all the pictures +he could find of Miss Gray. Now, when I was over there with father the +other day, what do you suppose is his chief decoration on his room +walls?"</p> + +<p>"I haven't the least idea," Ruth confessed.</p> + +<p>"Great, ugly, brutal boxers! Prize-fighters! Awful pictures, Ruth! I +suppose next he will make a collection of the photographs of burglars!" +and Helen laughed.</p> + +<p>The chums were whisked back to Ardmore, having been absent five days. +They were so well prepared in their recitations, however, that they did +not fall behind in any particular. Indeed, these two bright-minded girls +found it not difficult to keep up with their classes.</p> + +<p>Even Jennie Stone, leisure loving as she naturally was, had no real +difficulty in being well to the front in her studies. And she had become +one of the most faithful of devotees of gymnastic practice.</p> + +<p>Ardmore's second basket ball five pushed the first team hard; and Jennie +Stone was on the second five. As the spring training for the boats +opened she, as well as Ruth and Helen, tried for the freshmen +eight-oared shell. All three won places in that crew.</p> + +<p>Jennie was still somewhat over-weight. But the instructor put her at bow +and her weight counted there. Ruth was stroke and Helen Number 2. As +practice went on it was proved that the freshman crew was a very well +balanced one.</p> + +<p>They more than once "bumped" the sophomore shell in trial races, and +once came very near to catching the junior eight. The seniors and +juniors began now to pay more attention to the freshman class; +especially to those members who showed well in athletics.</p> + +<p>Because of their characters and their class standing, several of the +instructors besides Miss Cullam, the mathematics teacher, were the +friends of the Briarwoods. Miss Cullam had shown a warm appreciation of +Ruth Fielding's character all through the year. Not that Ruth was a +prize pupil in Miss Cullam's study, for she was not. Mathematics was the +one study it was hard for Ruth to interest herself in. But when the girl +of the Red Mill had a hard thing to do, she always put her whole mind to +it; and, therefore, she made a good mark in mathematics in spite of her +distaste for the study.</p> + +<p>"You are doing well, Miss Fielding," Miss Cullam declared. "Better than +I expected. I have no doubt that you will pass well in the year's +examinations."</p> + +<p>"And you won't be afraid that I'll crib the answers, Miss Cullam?" Ruth +asked, laughing.</p> + +<p>"Hush! don't repeat gossip," Miss Cullam said smiling, however, rather +ruefully. "Even when the gossip emanates from an old cross-patch of a +teacher who gets nervous and worries about improbabilities. No. I do not +believe any of my girls would take advantage of the examination papers. +Yet, I would give a good deal to know just where those papers and that +vase went."</p> + +<p>"Has nothing ever been heard from Miss Rolff since she left Ardmore?" +Ruth asked.</p> + +<p>"No. Not a word. And it is hard on the sororities, too. Heretofore, the +girls have enjoyed the benefits of the associations for three years. +<i>You</i>, I am sure, Ruth, would have been invited by this time to join one +of the sororities."</p> + +<p>"And I should dearly love to," sighed Ruth. "The Kappa Alpha. It looks +good to me. But there are other things in college—and out of it, too. +Oh see, Miss Cullam! Here is what I wanted to show you," and the girl of +the Red Mill brought forth a large envelope from her handbag.</p> + +<p>They were talking together in the library on this occasion, it being a +Saturday afternoon when there was nothing particular to take up either +the teacher's time or the pupil's. Ruth emptied the envelope on the +table.</p> + +<p>"See these photographs? They are stills taken in connection with my new +scenario. I want you to see just how lovely a place the old Red Mill, +where I live, is."</p> + +<p>Miss Cullam adjusted her eyeglasses with a smile, and picked up the +topmost picture which Mr. Hammond had sent to Ruth.</p> + +<p>"That's dear old Aunt Alvirah herself feeding the chickens. She doesn't +know that we took that picture of her. If I had said 'photograph' to the +dear old creature, she would have been determined to put on her best bib +and tucker!"</p> + +<p>"That's the back yard. Isn't it, dear? Who is that on the porch?" +asked Miss Cullam.</p> + +<p>"On the porch? Why, <i>is</i> anybody on the porch? I don't remember that."</p> + +<p>Ruth stooped to peer closer at the unmounted photograph in the teacher's +hand.</p> + +<p>"Why! there <i>is</i> somebody standing there," she murmured. "You can see +the head and shoulders just as plain——"</p> + +<p>"And the face," said Miss Cullam, with strange eagerness.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know!" cried Ruth, and she laughed heartily. "Of course. That's +Maggie."</p> + +<p>"Maggie?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. The girl who helps Aunt Alvirah. And she's quite an interesting +character, Miss Cullam. I'll tell you about her some day."</p> + +<p>"Yes?" said Miss Cullam, reflectively.</p> + +<p>"Now, here is the front of the old house——"</p> + +<p>"Allow me to keep this picture for a little while, will you, Miss +Fielding?" broke in the teacher, still staring at the clearly exposed +face of Maggie on the porch.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, certainly," responded the girl, curiously.</p> + +<p>"I wish to show this girl's face to somebody else. She seems very +familiar to me," the mathematics teacher said.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2> + +<h3>CAN IT BE A CLUE?</h3> + + +<p>Ruth gave the matter of Maggie's photograph very little thought. Not at +that time, at least. She merely handed the print over to Miss Cullam and +forgot all about it.</p> + +<p>These were busy days, both in the classroom and out of it. The warmth of +late spring was in the air; every girl who felt at all the blood +coursing in her veins, tried to be out of doors.</p> + +<p>The whole college was eager regarding the coming boat races. Ardmore was +to try out her first eight-oared crew with three of several colleges, +and two of the trials would be held upon Lake Remona.</p> + +<p>There were local races between the class crews every Saturday afternoon. +Jennie Stone had to choose between basket ball and rowing, for there +were Saturdays when both sports were in ascendency.</p> + +<p>"No use. I can't be in two places at once," declared Jennie, regretfully +resigning from the basketball team.</p> + +<p>"No, honey," said Helen. "You're not big enough for that now. A few +months ago you might have played basket ball and sent your shadow to +pull an oar with us. See what it means to get thin."</p> + +<p>"My! I feel like another girl," said the fleshy one ecstatically. "What +do you suppose my father will say to me in June?"</p> + +<p>"He'll say," suggested Helen, giggling, "'you took so much away, why do +you bring so little back from college?'"</p> + +<p>It was several days before Miss Cullam returned to Ruth the picture she +had borrowed; and when she did she made a statement regarding it that +very much astonished the girl of the Red Mill.</p> + +<p>"I will tell you now, my dear; why I wished to keep the photograph," the +teacher said. "I showed it to Dr. Milroth and to several of the other +members of the faculty."</p> + +<p>"Indeed?" responded Ruth, quite puzzled.</p> + +<p>"Some of them agree with me. Dr. Milroth does not. Nevertheless, I wish +you would tell me all about this Maggie who works for your aunt——"</p> + +<p>"Maggie!" gasped Ruth. "What do you mean, Miss Cullam? Was it because +her face is in the picture that you borrowed it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, my dear. I think, as do some of the other instructors, that Maggie +looks very much like the Miss Rolff who last year occupied the room you +have and who left us so strangely before the close of the semester."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Miss Cullam!"</p> + +<p>"Foolish, am I?" laughed the teacher. "Well, I suppose so. You know all +about Maggie, do you?"</p> + +<p>"No!" gasped Ruth.</p> + +<p>Eagerly she explained to the mathematics teacher how the strange girl +had appeared at the Red Mill and why she had remained there. Miss Cullam +was no less excited than Ruth when she heard these particulars.</p> + +<p>"I must tell Dr. Milroth this," Miss Cullam declared. "Say nothing about +it, Ruth Fielding. And she says her name is 'Maggie'? Of course! +Margaret Rolff. I believe that is who she is."</p> + +<p>"But to go out to housework," Ruth said doubtfully.</p> + +<p>"That doesn't matter. We must learn more about this Maggie. Say nothing +until I have spoken to Dr. Milroth again."</p> + +<p>But if this was a clue to the identity and where-abouts of the girl who +had left Ardmore so abruptly the year before, Ruth learned something the +very next day that, unfortunately, put it quite beyond her ability to +discover further details in the matter.</p> + +<p>A letter arrived from Aunt Alvirah and after reading it once through +Ruth hurried away to Miss Cullam with the surprising news it contained.</p> + +<p>Maggie had left the Red Mill. Without any explanation save that she had +been sent for and must go, the strange girl had left Aunt Alvirah and +Uncle Jabez, and they did not know her destination. Ben, the hired man, +had driven her to the Cheslow railway station and she had taken an +eastbound train. Otherwise, nothing was known of the strange girl's +movements.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear!" cried Miss Cullam. "I am certain, then, that she is +Margaret Rolff. Even Dr. Milroth has come to agree that it may be that +strange girl. I hoped there was a chance of learning what really became +of those missing examination papers—and, of course, the vase. But how +can we discover what became of them if the girl has disappeared again?"</p> + +<p>"Well, it's a very strange thing, I am sure," Ruth admitted. "Of course, +I'll write the folks at the Red Mill that if Maggie—or whatever her +real name is—ever turns up there again, they must let me know at once."</p> + +<p>"Yes, do," begged the teacher. "Now that the subject has come up again I +feel more disturbed than ever over those papers. <i>Were</i> they lost, or +weren't they? My dear Ruth! you don't know how I feel about that +mystery. All these girls whom I think so highly of, are still under +suspicion."</p> + +<p>"I hope nothing like that will happen this year, dear Miss Cullam," Ruth +said warmly. "I feel that we freshmen all want to pass our examinations +honestly—or not at all."</p> + +<p>"That is exactly what I believe about the other girls," groaned the +teacher. "But the sorority members admit that Margaret Rolff was +instructed to remove the Egyptian vase from the library as a part of the +stunt she was expected to do during the initiation ceremonies.</p> + +<p>"And in that vase were my papers. Of course, the girls did not know the +examination papers were there before the vase was taken. <i>But what +became of them afterward?</i>"</p> + +<p>"Why, Miss Cullam," Ruth said thoughtfully, "of course they must still +be in the vase."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps. Then, perhaps not," murmured the teacher. "Who knows?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> + +<h3>THE SQUALL</h3> + + +<p>The first college eight went off to Gillings, and, as it was only a few +miles by rail, half the student body, at least, went to root for the +crew. The Ardmore boat was beaten.</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear! To come home plucked in such a disgusting way," groaned +Helen, who, with Jennie, as well as Ruth, was among the disgruntled and +disappointed girls who had gone to see the race. "It is awful."</p> + +<p>"It's taught them a lesson, I wager," Ruth said practically. "We have +all been rowing in still water. The river at Gillings is rough, and the +local eight was used to it. I say, girls!"</p> + +<p>"Say it," said Jennie, gruffly. "It can't be anything that will hurt us +after what we've seen to-day. Three whole boatlengths ahead!"</p> + +<p>"Never mind," broke in Helen. "The races with Hampton and Beardsley will +be on our own lake."</p> + +<p>"And if there is a flutter of wind, our first eight will be beaten +again," from Jennie Stone.</p> + +<p>"No, no, girls!" Ruth cried. "I heard the coach tell them that hereafter +she was going to make them row if there was a hurricane. And that's what +<i>we</i> must do."</p> + +<p>"<i>Who</i> must do, Ruthie? What do you mean?" asked Helen.</p> + +<p>"The freshman eight."</p> + +<p>"E-lu-ci-date," drawled Jennie.</p> + +<p>"We must learn to handle our shell in rough water. If there is a breath +of wind stirring we mustn't beat it to land," said Ruth, vigorously. +"Let's learn to handle our shell in really rough water."</p> + +<p>"Sounds reasonable," admitted Jennie. "Shall we all take out accident +policies?"</p> + +<p>"No. All learn to swim. That's the wisest course," laughed Ruth.</p> + +<p>"Ain't it the <i>trewth</i>?" agreed Jennie, making a face. "I'm not much of +a swimmest in fresh water. But I never could sink."</p> + +<p>The freshmen with the chums in the eight-oared shell proved to be all +fair swimmers. And that crew was not the only one that redoubled its +practice after the disastrous race at Gillings College.</p> + +<p>Each class crew did its very best. The coaches were extremely stern with +the girls. Ardmore had a reputation for turning out champion crews, and +the year before, on their own water, the Ardmore eight had beaten +Gillings emphatically.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"But if we can win races only on our own course," <i>The Jasper</i>, the +Ardmore College paper declared, "what is the use of supporting an +athletic association and four perfectly useless crews?"</p></div> + +<p>They had all been so sure of victory over Gillings—both the student +body and the faculty—that the disgrace of their beating cut all the +deeper.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is fortunate," said the same stern commenter, "that our races +with Hampton, and again with Beardsley, will be on Lake Remona. At +least, our crew knows the water here—on a perfectly calm day, at +any rate."</p></div> + +<p>"I see Merry Dexter's fine Italian hand in <i>that</i>," Ruth declared, when +she and her chums read the criticism of the chief college eight. "And if +it is true of the senior shell, how much more so of our own? We must be +ready to risk a little something for the sake of pulling a good race."</p> + +<p>"Goodness!" murmured Helen. "When we're away off there in the middle of +the course between the landing and Bliss Island, for instance, and a +squall threatens, it is going to take pluck, my dear, to keep us all +steady."</p> + +<p>"I tell you what!" exclaimed Jennie Stone.</p> + +<p>"Tell it, if you're sure it won't hurt us," laughed Helen.</p> + +<p>"Let's get the coach to have us circle the island when we're out in +practice. It's always a little rough off both ends of Bliss Island, and +we should get used to rough water before our final home races."</p> + +<p>For, before the season was over, the four Ardmore eights would compete, +and that race was the one which the three under-classes particularly +trained for.</p> + +<p>Jennie's suggestion sounded practical to her chums; so there were three +already agreed when it was broached to the freshmen eight. The coach +thought well of it, too; for there was always a motor boat supposed to +be in sight of the shells when they were out at practice.</p> + +<p>This was in April, and, in Ardmore's latitude, a very uncertain month +April is—a time of showers and smiles, calms and uncertain gales. +Nevertheless, so thoroughly were the freshmen eight devoted to practice +that it had to be a pretty black looking afternoon, indeed, that kept +them from stepping into their boat.</p> + +<p>The boatkeeper was a weather-wise old man, who had guarded the Ardmore +girls against disaster on the lake for a decade. Being so well used to +reading the signs he never let the boats out when he considered the +weather threatening in any measure.</p> + +<p>One afternoon, when there had been a call passed for the freshmen eight +to gather at the boathouse immediately after recitations, Johnnie, as +the boatman was called, had been called away from his post. Only a green +assistant was there to look after the boats, and he was much too bashful +to "look after the girls," as Jennie, giggling, observed.</p> + +<p>"I don't see why they don't put blinders on that young man," she said. +"Whenever he has to look at one of us girls his freckles light up as +though there was an electric bulb behind each individual one."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Heavy! Behave!" murmured Helen, yet amused, too, by the bashfulness +of the assistant.</p> + +<p>"We <i>are</i> a sight, I admit," went on Jennie. "Everything in the shell, +girls? Now! up with it. Come on, little Trix," she added to the +coxswain. "Don't get your tiller-lines snarled, and bring your +'nose-warmer'"—by which inelegant term she referred to the megaphone +which, when they were really trying for speed was strapped to the +coxswain's head.</p> + +<p>The eight oarswomen picked the light shell up, shoulder high, and +marched down the platform to the float. Taking their cue from the +tam-o'-shanters the seniors had made them wear early in their college +experience, the freshmen eight wore light blue bandannas wound around +their heads, with the corners sticking up like rabbit-ears, blue +blouses, short skirts over bloomers, and blue stockings with white +shoes. Their appearance was exceedingly natty.</p> + +<p>"If we don't win in the races, we'll be worth looking at," Helen once +said pridefully.</p> + +<p>The assistant boatkeeper remained at a distance and said not a word to +them, although there was a bank of black cloud upon the western horizon +into which the sun would plunge after a time.</p> + +<p>"We're the first out," cried one of the girls. "There isn't another boat +on the lake."</p> + +<p>"Wrong, Sally," Ruth Fielding said. "I just saw a boat disappear behind +Bliss Island."</p> + +<p>"Not one of <i>ours</i>?" cried Jennie, looking about as they lowered the +shell into the water.</p> + +<p>"No. It was a skiff. Came from the other side, I guess. Or perhaps it +came up the river from the railroad bridge."</p> + +<p>"Now," said Trix Davenport, the coxswain, "are we going to ask that boy +to get out the launch and follow us?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, goodness me! No," said Helen, with assurance. "We don't want him +tagging us. Do we, girls?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it might be better," Ruth said slowly.</p> + +<p>But the chorus of the other girls cried her down. Besides, she did not +believe there was any danger. Of course, a rowing shell is an uncertain +thing; but she had never yet seen an accident on the lake.</p> + +<p>All stepped in, adjusted their oars, and the coxswain pushed off. Having +adjusted the rudder-lines, Trix affixed the megaphone, and lifted her +hand. The eight strained forward, and the coxswain began to beat time.</p> + +<p>Ruth set the pace in a long, swinging stroke, and the other seven fell +into time. The shell shot out from the landing just as the coach +appeared around the corner of Dare Hall, on her way down from the +gymnasium. She gave one glance at the sky, and then started to run.</p> + +<p>"Those foolish girls!" she exclaimed. "Where's Johnny?"</p> + +<p>The freshman eight was far out upon the lake when she reached the +boathouse, and she quickly saw that the old boatkeeper was not in sight. +She tried to signal the crew of the shell to return; but the girls in +the frail craft were too interested in their practice to look back +toward the shore. Indeed, in a very few minutes, they swept through the +slightly rough water at the eastern end of the island and disappeared +behind it. The coach, Miss Mallory, beckoned the assistant boatman and +ordered out the launch. But there was something wrong with the engine, +and he lost some time before getting the craft started.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, the cloudbank was rolling up from the west. The sun suddenly +was quenched. A breath of cold wind swept down the lake and fretted the +tiny waves. They sprang up in retaliation and slapped the bow of the +launch, which finally got under its sputtering way.</p> + +<p>Then a squall of wind swooped down and Miss Mallory was almost swept off +her feet. The boatman steered carefully, but the engine was not yet +working in good fashion. The coach made a mistake, too, in directing the +launch. Instead of starting directly up the lake, and rounding the head +of the island to meet the freshman shell, she ordered the boatman to +trail the boat that had disappeared.</p> + +<p>The launch was some time in beating around the lower end of the island.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> + +<h3>TREASURE HUNTING</h3> + + +<p>The freshmen shell was well around the end of Bliss Island and behind +it, before the squall broke. Pulling into the rising gale as they were +and the water being always a little rough here, at first none of Ruth +Fielding's associates in the craft realized that there was the least +danger.</p> + +<p>They were well off shore, for near the island the water was shallow and +there were rocks. These rowing shells are made so lightly that a mere +scraping of the keel over a sunken boulder would probably completely +wreck the craft, and well the girls knew this.</p> + +<p>Trix Davenport steered well out from the dangerous shallows. "Pull away, +girls!" she shouted through her megaphone. "It's going to blow."</p> + +<p>And just then the real squall swept down upon them. Ruth, although +setting a good, long stroke, found of a sudden that the shell was +scarcely moving ahead. The wind was so strong that they were only +holding their own against it.</p> + +<p>"Pull!" shouted the coxswain again.</p> + +<p>Ruth bent forward, braced her feet firmly and drove the long oar-blade +deep into the jumping little waves. Those waves quickly became larger +and "jumpier." A white wreath formed upon their crests. The shell in a +very few seconds was in the midst of white water.</p> + +<p>Once with Uncle Jabez, and in a heavy punt, the girl of the Red Mill had +been caught in the rapids of the Lumano below the mill, and had fought +with skill and courage to help save the boat. This effort was soon to be +as great—and she realized it.</p> + +<p>She set a pace that drove the shell on in the teeth of the squall; but +the boat shivered with every stroke. It was as though they were trying +to push the narrow, frail little shell into a solid wall.</p> + +<p>In pulling her oar Ruth scarcely ever raised her eyes to a level with +the coxswain's face; but when she chanced to, she saw that Trix was +pallid and her eyes were clouded with fear.</p> + +<p>Ruth hoped none of the other girls saw that mask of dread which the +situation had forced upon their little coxswain. She wanted to cry out +to Trix—to warn her to hide her emotion. But she had no breath to spare +for this.</p> + +<p>Every ounce of breath and of muscle she owned, Ruth put into her stroke. +She felt the rhythmic spring of the craft, and knew that her mates were +keeping well up with her. They were doing their part bravely, even +though they might be frightened.</p> + +<p>And then, suddenly and fortunately, the freshman craft found a sheltered +bit of water. A high shoulder of the hilly island broke the force of the +wind.</p> + +<p>"Ashore! Put us ashore!" Ruth managed to gasp so that Trix heard her.</p> + +<p>"We—we'll wreck the shell!" complained Trix. "It's so shallow."</p> + +<p>"We'll not drown in shallow water," ejaculated Ruth, expelling the words +between strokes.</p> + +<p>The coxswain shot them shoreward. She caught a glimpse of another boat +pulled up on the beach—the skiff they had earlier seen rounding the +point of the island.</p> + +<p>In thirty seconds they were safe. The rain began to pour down upon them +in a brisk torrent. But that did not matter.</p> + +<p>"Rather be half drowned in the rain than wholly drowned in the lake!" +Jennie Stone declared, as they scrambled out into the shallow water, +more than ankle deep, and lifted the treacherous shell out of the lake.</p> + +<p>"Goodness! what a near one that was!" Helen declared.</p> + +<p>Ruth looked at the skiff drawn up on the shore, and then up into the +grove of trees.</p> + +<p>"I wonder where the girl is who was in that boat?" she said.</p> + +<p>"Was it a girl?" asked Helen, with interest.</p> + +<p>"Yes. She must have found shelter somewhere from this rain. Come on! We +may be able to keep reasonably dry up there in the woods."</p> + +<p>The other girls followed Ruth, for she was naturally their leader. The +rain continued to beat down upon them; but before they reached the +opening in which was situated the Stone Face, Ruth spied an evergreen, +the drooping branches of which offered them reasonable shelter.</p> + +<p>"Come on into the green tent, girls!" shouted Jennie Stone, plunging +into the dimly lighted circle under the tree. "Oh! Goodness! What's +that?"</p> + +<p>"A dog!"</p> + +<p>"A cow! and I'm afraid of co-o-ows!" wailed Sally Blanchard, seizing +upon Ruth as the nearest savior.</p> + +<p>"Don't be silly, child," vouchsafed Helen, who had followed Jennie. "How +would a cow come upon this island—a mile from shore?"</p> + +<p>"Or a dog?" laughed Ruth. "What <i>did</i> you see, Jennie Stone?"</p> + +<p>"She just tried to fool us," Helen declared.</p> + +<p>"Didn't either," the stout girl said warmly. "Something ran out at the +far side as I came in."</p> + +<p>"An animal?" gasped Trix Davenport.</p> + +<p>"Well," returned Jennie Stone, "it certainly wasn't a vegetable. At +least, I never saw a vegetable run as fast as that thing did."</p> + +<p>"You needn't try to scare us to death, Heavy," complained Helen. "Of +course it must have been the girl Ruth said came ashore in that skiff."</p> + +<p>"Well, I didn't think of her," admitted Jennie. "But she ran like a +ferret. I'd like to know who she is."</p> + +<p>"Remember the girl we found over here that night in the snowstorm?" +whispered Helen to Ruth. "The girl who looked like that Maggie?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't I!" exclaimed Ruth, shaking her head.</p> + +<p>"What do you suppose <i>she</i> was after—and what is this one over here on +the island for?" pursued Helen, languidly.</p> + +<p>Ruth made no reply, but her cheeks flushed and her eyes grew brighter. +She stooped and peered out at the decreasing rainfall. There was a path +leading straight toward the Stone Face. Had this girl whom Jennie had +seen gone in that direction?</p> + +<p>The other members of the freshman crew were so inordinately busy +chattering and laughing and telling jokes and stories that nobody for +the moment noticed Ruth Fielding, who stole out from the covert through +the fast slackening rainfall without saying a word. Lightly running over +the crest of the hill, she came in sight of the huge boulder at which +she and Helen had experienced their never-to-be-forgotten adventure the +winter before.</p> + +<p>She saw nobody at the foot of the boulder, but she pressed on to the +edge of the grove to make sure. And then she saw that somebody had +certainly and very recently been at work near the boulder.</p> + +<p>There was a pickaxe—perhaps the very one she had seen there in the +winter—and a shovel. Some attempt had been made to dig over the +gravelly soil for some yards from the foot of the boulder.</p> + +<p>"Goodness me! what can this mean?" thought the girl of the Red Mill. +"Something must be buried here! Treasure hunters! Fancy!" and she +laughed a little uncertainly. "Can somebody believe that this is one of +the hiding places of Captain Kidd's gold? Who ever heard the like?"</p> + +<p>The rain ceased falling. There was a tooting of a horn down behind the +island. The launch had come in sight of the shell and Miss Mallory was +trying to signal the girls to return to the shore.</p> + +<p>But Ruth did not go back. She heard the girls shout for her, but instead +of complying she went straight across to the Stone Face and picked up +the heavy pickaxe.</p> + +<p>"I don't believe whoever has been digging has found anything yet," she +told herself. "No. She's been here before—for, of course, it is that +girl. She couldn't have dug all this over in a few minutes. No. She has +been here and dug unsuccessfully. Then she has come back to-day for +another attempt at—at the treasure, shall we call it? Well!"</p> + +<p>There was already an excavation more than a foot in depth and several +yards in circumference. Whatever it was the strange girl had been after +she was not quite sure of its burial place.</p> + +<p>In the winter when she had essayed to dig for the hidden thing there had +been too much frost in the ground. Besides, doubtless Ruth and Helen's +inquisitiveness had frightened the strange girl away. Now she was back +again—somewhere now on Bliss Island. She had not accomplished her +purpose as yet. Ruth smote the hard ground at her feet with all her +strength. The pick sunk to its helve in the earth, now softened by the +spring rain.</p> + +<p>"Oh! I hit something!" she gasped.</p> + +<p>In all probability she would not have continued to dig had this success +not met her at the beginning. Really, her swinging of the pickaxe had +been idly done. But the steel rang sharply on something. She raised the +pick and used it thereafter more cautiously. There certainly was +something below the surface—not very far down——</p> + +<p>Dropping the pickaxe, Ruth gained possession of the shovel and threw +aside the loose earth. Yes! there was some object hidden there—some +"treasure" which she desired to see.</p> + +<p>In a few moments, becoming impatient of the shovel, she cast it aside +and stooping, with her feet planted firmly in the muddy earth, she +groped in the hole with both hands.</p> + +<p>Before she dragged the object into sight Ruth Fielding was positive by +its shape and the feel of it, of the nature of the object. As she rose +up at last, firmly grasping the object, a sharp voice said behind her:</p> + +<p>"Well, now that you've interfered and found it, suppose you hand it over +to me. You haven't any business with that vase, you know!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2> + +<h3>THE END OF A PERFECT YEAR</h3> + + +<p>Helen Cameron came running over the hill and down the sloppy path +through the grove. When she reached the Stone Face where Ruth and the +strange girl were standing, she cried:</p> + +<p>"What <i>is</i> the matter with you, Ruthie Fielding? Come on over to the +boat. Miss Mallory sent me after you.... Why! who's this?"</p> + +<p>"Don't you remember this girl, Helen?" asked Ruth, seriously.</p> + +<p>"Why! it's the girl who was camping in the snow, isn't it?" said Helen, +curiously eyeing the stranger. "How-do?"</p> + +<p>But the other was not pleased to allow the situation to develop into +merely a well-bred meeting of three former acquaintances. She did not +vouchsafe Helen a glance, but said, directing her words toward Ruth:</p> + +<p>"I want that vase. It doesn't belong to you."</p> + +<p>"Goodness, Ruthie!" put in her chum, for the first time seeing the +object in Ruth's hands. "What is that thing?"</p> + +<p>"I just dug it up here. It is the Egyptian vase taken from the Ardmore +library last year I believe."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't matter where it came from. I want it," cried the strange +girl, and she stepped forward quickly as though to seize the muddy vase.</p> + +<p>But Helen sprang forward and pushed her back.</p> + +<p>"Hold on! I guess if Ruth's got it, you'll have to wait and prove +property," said Helen. "How about it, Ruth?"</p> + +<p>"She must tell us all about it," said Ruth, firmly. "Perhaps I may let +her have it—if she tells us the truth."</p> + +<p>"The truth!" exclaimed Helen.</p> + +<p>"I won't tell you a thing!" cried the strange girl. "You haven't any +right to that vase."</p> + +<p>"Nor have you," Ruth told her.</p> + +<p>"Well——"</p> + +<p>"Nor has Margaret Rolff," went on Ruth, coolly. "I take it you are +acting for her, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"Why," cried Helen, beginning to understand. "That is the girl who left +Ardmore last year?"</p> + +<p>"And came to the Red Mill after spending the summer at a camp on the +Lumano and helped Aunt Alvirah," Ruth added, with a smile.</p> + +<p>"Well, I never! Not Maggie?" demanded Helen.</p> + +<p>"I think I am right," Ruth said quietly. "Am I not?" to the other girl. +"Our Maggie is Margaret Rolff, and <i>you</i> must be her sister. At least, +you look enough like her to be some relative."</p> + +<p>The other made a gesture of resignation and dropped her hands. "I might +as well confess it," she admitted. "You are Ruth Fielding, and Margy +told me long ago you might be trusted."</p> + +<p>"And this is my particular friend, Helen Cameron," Ruth said, "who is to +be fully trusted, too."</p> + +<p>"I suppose so," said the girl. "My name is Betty. I'm Margy's younger +sister. Poor Margy. She never was very strong. I mean that she was +always giving in to other people—was easily confused.</p> + +<p>"She's bright enough, you know," pursued the other girl, warmly; "but +she is nervous and easily put out. What those girls did to her last year +at this college was a shame!"</p> + +<p>Another hail from behind the hill warned Ruth that she must attend Miss +Mallory's command or there would be trouble.</p> + +<p>"We cannot wait to hear it all, Miss—Betty, did you say your name was? +Where are you staying?"</p> + +<p>"I have been working in Greenburg all winter. We're poor girls and have +no parents. Margy is with me now," said the girl. "And I want that vase. +I want it for Margy. She will never be satisfied until she can give it +back to the dean of the college herself and explain how she came to hide +it, and then forgot where she hid the vase."</p> + +<p>"Tell me where to find you in Greenburg," said Ruth, hastily. "No! I'll +not let you have the vase now. I will not show it to anybody else, +however, and we'll come over to town this evening and bring it with us, +and talk with Maggie."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Miss Fielding——"</p> + +<p>"That must satisfy you," said Ruth, firmly; and Betty Rolff had to be +satisfied with this promise. She told the chums where she and Margaret +were staying and then Ruth and Helen ran back to their friends, Ruth +concealing the hastily wiped silver vase under the loose front of her +blouse.</p> + +<p>"Goodness!" she said to Helen, "I hope nobody will see it. Do I bulge +<i>much</i>?"</p> + +<p>There was so much excitement among the crew of the freshman eight, +however, that Ruth's treasure-trove was not discovered. Under Miss +Mallory's direction they launched the shell again, climbed aboard, and +made a safe passage to the dock.</p> + +<p>A notice was put up that very evening, however, to the effect that none +of the racing shells were to be taken out unless the launch was manned +and went with the frailer craft.</p> + +<p>The students of Ardmore were allowed to leave the college grounds in the +evening if they were properly chaperoned. And when Ruth went to Miss +Cullam and explained a little of what was afoot, the mathematics +instructor was only too glad to act in the capacity of chaperon.</p> + +<p>Helen had telephoned for a car, and the three rode down to Greenburg +immediately after dinner. Ruth carried the recovered vase, just as she +had dug it out of the hole by the Stone Face on Bliss Island, wrapped in +a paper. She had not had time either to clean it or to examine it more +thoroughly.</p> + +<p>They easily found the boarding house, the address of which Betty Rolff +had given to Ruth. It was a respectable place, but was far from +sumptuous. It was evident, as Ruth had been previously informed, that +the Rolff girls were not very well off in this world's goods.</p> + +<p>When the visitors climbed to the second floor bedroom where the sisters +were lodged, Miss Cullam took the lead, walked straight in, seized +Margaret Rolff in her arms and implanted a kiss upon the pale cheek of +the girl who had for so many months been Aunt Alvirah's assistant at the +Red Mill.</p> + +<p>"You poor girl!" said the mathematics teacher. "What you must have been +through! Now, I am delighted to see you again, and you must tell me all +about it—how you came to take the vase, and bury it, and all."</p> + +<p>There was a good deal of talk on both sides before all this that Miss +Cullam asked was explained. But the facts were made clear at last.</p> + +<p>In the first place, Margaret Rolff had always been very much afraid of +the dark and of being alone at night. But she wanted so much to become a +member of the Kappa Alpha that she did not try to cry off when she +received her instructions as a candidate for membership in that +sorority.</p> + +<p>The first part of her initiation test was easy enough. She secured the +Egyptian vase from the reception room of the library without being +apprehended. Then she was rowed across the lake to the island by several +black-robed and hooded figures whom she did not know.</p> + +<p>Left with a flashlight and a spade to bury the stolen vase within a +short distance of the Stone Face, Margaret had tried her best to control +her nerves and do as she was commanded. But she could never really +remember whether she had buried the vase or not. The idea had been for +her to bury it, and then another candidate would be made to search for +it the next night.</p> + +<p>Everything about the initiation went wrong, however, because Margaret +lost her nerve. The members of the sorority could not find the place +where the candidate had really dug her hole and buried the vase. And +Margaret had fled in a panic from the college before further inquiry +could be made.</p> + +<p>"All this time," explained the practical sister, Betty, "Margy has +wanted to know if she did bury the vase or not. She felt she had stolen +from the college and could be punished for it. I think those girls that +set her the task should be punished."</p> + +<p>"They have been," said Miss Cullam, grimly. "Yet, it was really a +misunderstanding all around. Now, let me see that vase, Ruth Fielding."</p> + +<p>The latter was glad to do this. The teacher opened the package and +immediately turned the vase upside down and shook it. There was +evidently something inside, and after some work with the handiest of all +feminine tools, a hatpin, a soggy mass of paper was dislodged from the +Egyptian vase.</p> + +<p>"The missing examination papers, girls!" sighed Miss Cullam, with much +satisfaction. "There, Margaret! You may have the vase and return it to +Dr. Milroth to-morrow if you like. And I hope you will return to the +college and be with us next year.</p> + +<p>"I have what <i>I</i> am after and feel more contented in my mind than I have +for some months. Dear me, girls! you don't at all understand what a +number of trials and perplexities are heaped upon the minds of us poor +teachers."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>There were many other incidents occurring at Ardmore before the end of +what Helen Cameron declared was a "perfect year." But nothing created +more interest than the recovery of the Egyptian vase with the missing +examination papers, unless it was the boat races. Though to a few, +perhaps, certain plans for the coming summer overtopped even these in +importance. These were such a very great secret that the chums scarcely +dared discuss them.</p> + +<p>But those readers who may so desire will read about the happenings that +developed from these plans of Ruth and her friends in the subsequent +volume of the series, entitled, "Ruth Fielding in the Saddle; or, +College Girls in the Land of Gold."</p> + +<p>First of the races was that with the first eight of Beardsley; and the +crew of Ardmore won. Then came the trial between Ardmore and Hampton +College, and the former won that as well.</p> + +<p>Ardmore was in high fettle at that. <i>The Jasper</i> was quite as +enthusiastically complimentary now as it had been critical after the +race with Gillings, for in winning the race against Hampton College, the +Ardmore crew had been forced to row through very rough water.</p> + +<p>Commencement came in June, and two days before the graduation exercises +of the senior class, the local aquatic sports were held. The main +incident of this carnival was the race between the class eights.</p> + +<p>The shells were started at twenty-yard intervals, and in the order of +the classes. The freshman eight, in which rowed Ruth, Helen and Jennie, +had practised vigorously all these weeks and now they displayed the +value of their exertions.</p> + +<p>Within the first quarter they "bumped" the sophomore eight. This crew +dropped out of the race immediately and the freshmen spun ahead, Ruth +setting a wonderfully effective stroke, and little Trix Davenport +swaying her body in time with the motion of the boat and shouting +encouragement through her megaphone.</p> + +<p>On and on crept the freshman eight until there was barely a hand's +breadth between the nose of their shell and the stern of the junior +craft. The crowd along shore cheered the younger girls vociferously, and +although they did not quite "bump" the juniors before crossing the mile +line——</p> + +<p>"We came so near it there was no fun in it!" declared Jennie Stone, +delightedly. "Oh, girls! some of us are going to be great rowists after +a few more years at Ardmore."</p> + +<p>"Dear me," panted Helen, making the last pun of the term. "It should be +called <i>Hard</i>-more. I never worked so hard in my life as I have this +first year at college."</p> + +<p>"But it will never hurt us," laughed Ruth, later. "We have got on +famously."</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> have, my dear," interposed Helen. "You stand A, number one in +classes. And look at that new play of yours—a big success! Money is +rolling in on you——"</p> + +<p>"Think a little of yourself," proposed Ruth. "Don't you consider your +time well spent here, my dear chum?"</p> + +<p>"Sure! It <i>is</i> the end of a perfect year," agreed Helen.</p> + +<p>"And think of me—<i>little</i> me!" cried Jennie Stone, bursting into the +chums' study at that moment, and in time to hear the last of the +conversation. "Do you know what's happened, girls?"</p> + +<p>"No! What?" demanded the curious Helen.</p> + +<p>"I have lost another pound," said the ex-fat girl, in a sepulchral +voice.</p> + + +<h4>THE END</h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_RUTH_FIELDING_SERIES" id="THE_RUTH_FIELDING_SERIES"></a>THE RUTH FIELDING SERIES</h2> + +<h3>By ALICE B. EMERSON</h3> + +<h4><i>12mo. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors. Price 50 cents per volume. +Postage 10 cents additional</i>.</h4> + +<h4>Ruth Fielding was an orphan and came to live with her miserly uncle.<br /> Her +adventures and travels make stories that will hold the interest of every +reader.</h4> + +<h4>Ruth Fielding is a character that will live in juvenile fiction.</h4> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING IN THE GREAT NORTHWEST<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING ON THE ST. LAWRENCE<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING TREASURE HUNTING<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING IN THE FAR NORTH<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AT GOLDEN PASS<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING IN ALASKA<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AND HER GREAT SCENARIO<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AT CAMERON HALL<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING CLEARING HER NAME<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING IN TALKING PICTURES<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AND BABY JUNE<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AND HER DOUBLE<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AND HER GREATEST TRIUMPH<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">RUTH FIELDING AND HER CROWNING VICTORY<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h4>These books may be purchased wherever books are sold</h4> + +<h4><i>Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue</i></h4> + +<h4>CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York</h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_BARTON_BOOKS_FOR_GIRLS" id="THE_BARTON_BOOKS_FOR_GIRLS"></a>THE BARTON BOOKS FOR GIRLS</h2> + +<h3>By MAY HOLLIS BARTON</h3> + +<h4><i>12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. With colored Jacket.</i></h4> + +<h4><i>Price 50 cents per volume. Postage 10 cents additional.</i></h4> + +<h4><i>May Hollis Barton is a new writer for girls who is bound to win +instant popularity. Her style is somewhat of a reminder of that of +Louisa M. Alcott, but thoroughly up-to-date in plot and action. +Clean tales that all the girls will enjoy reading.</i></h4> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">THE GIRL FROM THE COUNTRY<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">THREE GIRL CHUMS AT LAUREL HALL<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">NELL GRAYSON'S RANCHING DAYS<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">FOUR LITTLE WOMEN OF ROXBY<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">PLAIN JANE AND PRETTY BETTY<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">HAZEL HOOD'S STRANGE DISCOVERY<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">TWO GIRLS AND A MYSTERY<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">THE GIRLS OF LIGHTHOUSE ISLAND<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">KATE MARTIN'S PROBLEM<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">THE GIRL IN THE TOP FLAT<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">THE SEARCH FOR PEGGY ANN<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">SALLIE'S TEST OF SKILL<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">CHARLOTTE CROSS AND AUNT DEB<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">VIRGINIA'S VENTURE<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h4><i>Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue</i></h4> + +<h4>CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York</h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_BETTY_GORDON_SERIES" id="THE_BETTY_GORDON_SERIES"></a>THE BETTY GORDON SERIES</h2> + +<h3>By ALICE B. EMERSON</h3> + +<h4>Author of the "<span class="smcap">Ruth Fielding Series</span>"</h4> + +<h4><i>12mo. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors. Price 50 cents per volume. +Postage 10 cents additional.</i></h4> + +<h4><i>A new series of stories bound to make this writer more popular than +ever with her host of girl readers. <br />Every one will want to know Betty +Gordon, and every one will be sure to love her.</i></h4> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON AT BOARDING SCHOOL<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON AND HER SCHOOL CHUMS<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON AT RAINBOW RANCH<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON IN MEXICAN WILDS<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON AND THE LOST PEARLS<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON ON THE CAMPUS<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON AND THE HALE TWINS<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON AT MYSTERY FARM<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON ON NO-TRAIL ISLAND<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BETTY GORDON AND THE MYSTERY GIRL<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h4><i>Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue</i></h4> + +<h4>CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers New York</h4> + + + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Ruth Fielding At College, by Alice B. 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