RULES AND RESULTS.
The strangest thing about Miss Plympton was that she never was able to
tell the Tucker Twins apart. This was an unforgivable offense in their
eyes and in the eyes of their friends. They were as alike as two peas in
some ways and the antipodes in others. They might mystify you from the
back but once you got a good look in their eyes, the mirrors of their
souls, you were pretty apt to get them straight and keep them straight.
Then their colouring was so different. Dee's hair was black with blue
lights and Dum's was black with red lights; Dee's eyes were grey and
Dum's hazel; Dee had a dimple in her chin, while Dum's chin had an
uncompromising squareness to it that gave you to understand that her
character was quite as fixed as Gibraltar, and she had no more idea of
changing her mind than Miss Plympton had of toying with unalterable
facts, such as 1066 or 1492.
From the very beginning I scented trouble between the new principal and
the Tuckers. Miss Plympton called them Miss Tucker indiscriminately, and
sometimes both of them answered and sometimes neither of them. Either
way irritated Miss Plympton. She seemed to think they should know by
instinct which one she meant. She finally grasped the fact that they had
separate names but was more than apt to call Dee, Virginia, and Dum,
Caroline, which was quite as unpardonable as saying Columbus discovered
America in 1066 would have been to her.
"The very next time she calls me Caroline, I'm going to call her
Plumpton," declared Dum. "I don't mean that Dee ain't as good as I am
and a heap better, but I'm me----"
"Yes, and in the same vernacular Dee's her," I teased. We had a compact
to correct the grammar of our roommates.
"I stand corrected about ain't but I still stick to 'I'm me.' It is more
forceful and means more than 'I'm I.' Of course I'm I, but in Miss
Plumpton's mind there seems to be strong doubt whether I'm me. I is a
kind of ladylike, sissy outside of a person, but me is the inmost,
inward, soul self--I'm me--me--me!"
"Well, you certainly are and there is no one quite like you. I don't see
why Miss Plympton can't see it, too."
"I know why! It's because she doesn't understand people. She thinks of
us as being human beings of the female sex, who weigh a certain amount,
are just so tall and so wide, have lived a certain time and come from
such and such a city. Why, the only difference she sees between you and
Mary Flannagan is that you are in 117 and Mary is in 115, and you have
brown hair and Mary has red, and Mary is better on dates than you are.
The real true Page Allison is a closed book to that fat head. I believe
Miss Peyton knew our souls as well as she did our bodies."
We missed Miss Peyton every hour of the day. Her reign had been wise and
gentle and always just. We never forgot her kindness to us the time Dee
kept the kitten in her room all night. She won us over for life then and
there. Miss Plympton had retained all of Miss Peyton's rules and added
to them. She fenced us around with so many rules that the honour system
was abolished.
Study hall was a very different place from what it had been in Miss
Peyton's time. Then order had ruled because we were on our honour not to
communicate with one another by word or sign. Of course some girls do
not regard honour as a very precious thing and they broke their word,
but most girls, I am glad to say, have as keen a sense of honour as the
best of men. Miss Plympton's attitude toward us was one of doubt and
suspicion and, the honour system being abolished, we naturally felt that
the most serious fault we could commit would be breaking the eleventh
commandment: "Thou shalt not be found out." We developed astonishing
agility in evading the authorities and getting out of scrapes. From
having been five law-abiding citizens, we turned into extremely slick
outlaws. Even Annie Pore would sometimes suggest escapades that no one
would dream could find harbour behind that calm, sweet brow.
The same unrest pervaded the whole school. A day never passed that some
group of girls was not called to the office to have a serious reprimand.
We got so hardened that it meant no more to us than the ordinary routine
of the day, while the year before to be called to the office to have
Miss Peyton censure you about something was a calamity that every one
earnestly prayed to avoid. Miss Peyton never talked to you like a Dutch
Uncle unless you needed it, while Miss Plympton never talked to you any
other way.
"She makes me feel like an inmate of a detention home or some place
where the criminally insane are sent," stormed Dee. "She makes out I
have done things I never even thought of doing and has not got sense
enough to know I never lie."
"What was it this time?" I asked.
"She said I changed the record on the Victrola Sunday night from 'Lead,
Kindly Light,' sung by Louise Homer, to 'A-Roaming in the Gloaming,' by
Harry Lauder. You see all that bunch of preachers was here, and, of
course, only sacred music was permissible under the circumstances."
"Why, I did that!" exclaimed Dum, "and didn't the preachers like it,
though! Well, I reckon it is up to me to go 'fess up."
"Not a bit of it!" declared Dee. "She never asked who did it--that's not
her way. She works with a spy system, so let her work that way. I bet we
can outwit any spy she can get."
It seems strange when I look back on it that this spirit of mischief had
entered into our crowd to such an extent, but we were not the same girls
we had been the year before, all because of this head of the school who
did not understand girls. If she had trusted us, we would have been
trustworthy, I am sure.
There was a printed list of don'ts a yard long tacked up in every
available spot, and I can safely declare that during the year we did
every single thing we were told not to do. If we missed one of them it
was an accident. They were such silly don'ts. "No food must be kept in
the rooms." Now, what school girl is going to keep such a rule as that?
"No talking in the halls or corridors." That would be impossible except
in a deaf and dumb institution. "No washing of clothes of any sort in
the rooms or bath rooms." Then what is the use of having little crepe de
chine handkerchiefs and waists if they must be sent in the laundry and
come back starched and all the nice crinkle ironed out of them? Who
would put her best silk stockings in wash to have them come back minus a
foot? "No ink to be taken to rooms." We would just as soon have written
with pencils except that the rule made us long to break it. Of course,
break it we did. "No talking after lights are out." Now what nonsense
was that? When lights are out is the very time to talk to your roommate.
I verily believe that there was not one single rule on that list that
was necessary. There were lots more of them and all of them equally
silly. The worst one of all was: "Absolutely no visiting in rooms."
That meant no social life at all.
We had looked forward to having Annie and Mary next to us, but if there
was to be no visiting it would not do us much good. Annie thought up a
scheme that surprised and delighted us.
"Let's have telephonic communication. Our closets adjoin."
"Good! So they do," tweedled the Tuckers. "We'll get Zebedee to send us
the things to make it." Of course Zebedee sent them the required things
as he always aided and abetted us in every scheme to have a good time.
He bought one of the toy telephones that has a tiny battery attached and
is really excellent as a house telephone. We installed it quite easily
with the aid of an auger that Zebedee had the forethought to send with
the toy. The things came disguised as shoes. That telephone was a great
source of pleasure to us and at times proved to be a real friend. It was
concealed behind Dum's Sunday dress and it would have been a clever
detective who could have discovered it.
"Let's not tell a soul about it," said Mary, "because you know how
things spread. You know," holding up one finger, "and I know," holding
up another, "and that makes eleven."
We kept our secret faithfully and often mystified the other girls by
communicating things to our neighbours when they knew we had not been to
their room and had not spoken to them in the halls. Of course we did not
have a bell as that would have been a dangerous method of attracting
attention, but three knocks on the wall was a signal that you were
wanted at the phone.
Annie was the originator of another scheme that saved us many a demerit.
Every one of us had a dummy that could be made in a few moments, and
these we always carefully put in our beds when we went off on the
spreads or what not that took us out of our rooms when we were supposed
to be in them.
"How on earth did you ever think of such a thing, Annie?" asked the
admiring Mary.
"I am ashamed to say the Katzenjammer Kids in the comic supplement put
it in my head," blushed Annie. "I know it is not very refined but I
always read it."
It was rather incongruous to think of Annie Pore, the timid, shy, very
ladylike English girl, who a little more than a year ago looked as
though she had not a friend in the world and had never read anything
more recent than Tennyson's "Maud," not only reading the funny paper but
learning mischief from it and imparting the same to the Tucker Twins,
past masters in the art of getting into scrapes. These dummies were
topped by boudoir caps with combings carefully saved and stitched in the
edge of the caps, giving a most life like look when stuffed out with
anything that came to hand. A sofa cushion dressed up in a night gown,
tucked carefully under the cover with the boudoir cap reposing on the
pillow, would fool any teacher who came creeping into our room after
lights out to see if we were in any mischief.
Mary's hair, being that strong healthy kind of red hair, never came out,
so she had no combings, never had had any. We ravelled out Dum's old
red sweater sleeve and made a wonderful wig, some redder than Mary's,
but in the subdued light in which it was to be viewed it did very well.
"Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care," Mary would quote as
she tucked her counterfeit self up in her warm bed preparatory to some
midnight escapade.