A MYSTERY SOLVED
The brief month of February was starred for the Willis family by the
little mother's birthday. She was steadily improving, according to
her own letters and the reports from the doctors, and Doctor Hugh,
who spent at least one week-end each month with her, brought back
glowing accounts of her progress along the road to health. He
managed to get away to spend her birthday with her and personally
carried her the gifts and notes and loving wishes of the three
girls, Aunt Trudy, Winnie and close friends who also remembered.
Almost before the snow had gone, talk of the March fair began to
engage the attention of the Eastshore school pupils. This was an
annual event and there was much rivalry between the three schools as
to which should turn in the most money. The proceeds of the fair
went to the Memorial Hospital in Bennington, rather had gone into
the building fund until this year for the hospital had recently
been completed. The high and grammar and primary schools, each had
tables and exhibits and there was always a large attendance during
the Friday afternoon and Saturday the fair was under way.
"The high school is going to have a cafeteria," reported Rosemary at
dinner one night. "I wish we'd thought of that. The boys are going
to wear white aprons and caps and stand behind the tables and serve
the food, while the girls act as waitresses and carry out the dishes
and look after the silver. They want every one to eat their supper
there Friday and Saturday night."
"All right, we'll come," promised Aunt Trudy. "Hugh can meet us
there, can't you, Hugh?"
"Of course," he agreed. "But I'm saving my money for the grammar and
primary school tables--I want that understood. I'll treat you all to
supper, and please Jack Welles at the same time, but the real
expenditures of this family must be where they'll count for the
lower grades."
The three girls beamed upon him approvingly.
"I'm going to have charge of the cake table," said Rosemary. "Tell
Winnie to buy our Sunday cake from me, won't you, Aunt Trudy? I
have ten different kinds of icings to make--every one of the girls
has asked me to ice her cake, because they say I always have good
luck."
"I hope you'll use sugar and not salt," murmured the doctor
wickedly.
"Oh, Hugh, wasn't that soup too dreadful!" said Rosemary, shuddering
at the recollection. "I know perfectly well I didn't put in too much
salt and yet no one else seasoned it--I wish I knew how it
happened."
"Let it go as a mystery," advised her brother. "What are you going
to do in the fair line, Sarah?" he added, turning to her.
"Sell gold fish," she answered placidly. "What are you laughing at?"
she asked them in surprise. "I have a great big bowl with gold fish
in it and a lot of little bowls; and people buy the little bowls for
fifteen cents and I dip out two gold fish with a soup ladle for
twenty-five cents, and they take them home."
"I'm going to sell little baby bouquets," announced Shirley, who
looked like a "baby bouquet" herself in a pink challis frock. "I
have 'em on a tray and I walk around and people buy them for their
buttonholes."
"I'll be your first customer, sweetheart," Doctor Hugh assured her.
Preparations for the fair absorbed most of the after-school time of
the next two weeks. There were committee meetings and inter-class
conferences, and difficulties that required to be straightened out
and sensitive feelings that needed careful handling.
"We could get along so much faster, if every one was pleasant,"
sighed Rosemary to her brother. "Fannie Mears has a dozen
pin-cushions to make and she made twelve of us promise to take one
and finish it for the fancy-work table; and then she wouldn't help
iron the napkins for the cake plates. She said it wasn't her table
and she didn't intend to waste her time. Harriet Reed heard her and
she was so mad she ripped up the pincushion she had just sewed and
the sewing teacher found it in the waste-basket and she says Harriet
has to buy material to replace the stuff she tore and she can't go
home after school to-morrow until she has made another pincushion."
"Well, I don't think Harriet helped her cause much," said the doctor
pacifically.
"Well Fannie Mears is too mean," said Rosemary. "It isn't a very
nice thing to say, Hugh--"
"Then don't say it, dear," he countered promptly. "Don't gossip,
Rosemary. I know of nothing harder on the nerves and temper than a
fair, and if you can keep cheerful and serene and not quarrel with
your friends and above all, don't talk about them in their absence,
you will have done better than most fair workers twice your age."
Rosemary remembered this bit of advice often in the turbulent days
that followed. Fannie Mears was one of those girls who manage to sow
discord and dissension wherever they go. She had a tireless industry
that commended her to her teachers and she was always ready to
accept additional tasks and duties. What they did not see was that
she distributed these tasks among her friends and the girls in the
lower grades and then was unwilling to help them in turn.
"I suppose you've heard what Fannie Mears and Nina Edmonds have done
now?" remarked Sarah one noon period when the fair was a scant week
off.
"No, what?" asked Rosemary who avoided Nina's name whenever
possible.
"Why they've taken three dozen needle-books that have to have the
flannel leaves tied in them with ribbon," explained Sarah. "See,
Shirley has four to do. Fannie and Nina promised Miss Carlson
they'd do them, and now they've handed them all out in the primary
grades. They wanted me to do six, but I wouldn't."
Sarah was engrossed with the gold fish which had already arrived and
were housed in the natural history room in the high school building.
She visited them several times daily and in his heart Mr. Martin,
the biology teacher feared she would kill them with kindness before
the fair opened.
"Shirley doesn't mind tying the leaves in, do you dear?" asked
Rosemary cheerfully.
"Not much," replied Shirley, "only I wanted to cut the ribbons for
my flower bouquets yesterday afternoon, and Fannie wouldn't lend me
the scissors."
"I'll help you do it this afternoon," promised Rosemary, who had
planned to assemble the recipes for her cake icings and see what
supplies were lacking that she would need.
"If that fancy-work table ever gets enough things, the rest of us
may be able to pay a little attention to our own tables," she said
to herself.
But that afternoon Shirley came crying to Rosemary to say that she
had lost the four little needle-books.
"I've looked everywhere," the child insisted. "All over everywhere,
Rosemary. And they're all gone."
"That means I'll have to make four," said poor Rosemary. "Don't cry,
Shirley, Sister will see that you have four needle-books to turn in.
Though I don't see how you could lose them," she added wearily.
"I'll bet Fannie Mears took those books," declared Sarah when she
heard of the loss. "It would be just like her. She thinks it's smart
to get four extra books."
Rosemary protested weakly at this idea. In her heart of hearts, she
thought Fannie quite capable of such an act, but she had loyally
resolved to try and follow Hugh's advice.
"But I can't help wishing he knew Fannie," said Rosemary to herself.
She made the needle-books and helped Shirley measure and cut the
ribbon for her bouquets. Sarah's "soup ladle" proved to be a net and
that small girl "experimented" with the netting so earnestly that
she required a new net to be inserted practically every day. Of
course Rosemary was called on for this and as a result her own work
was left quite to the last.
"But I couldn't ice the cakes till the day before the fair, anyway,"
she said philosophically to Miss Parsons, "though I did want to
have time to see that the plates and napkins were matched; last year
we ran short of napkins."
The morning of the fair, Rosemary hurried upstairs to ice her cakes.
They were all arranged on the kitchen table, thirty of them, each
one a triumph of culinary art. Rosemary was excused from school for
the day, but the cakes had been baked late the previous afternoon
for it was a school rule that the fair was not to interfere with
class attendance.
"And I don't see why Rosemary Willis should be excused," muttered
Fannie Mears indignantly.
"I suppose you think she can ice thirty cakes in half an hour,"
Sarah flung back. "And set the table and go home and get dressed,
too."
Humming happily, Rosemary tied on her white apron and went about her
mixing. As she had said, there were ten different icings to be made,
the same flavor being allowed only three cakes. Some were loaves and
some were layers and one or two had been scorched. These Rosemary
carefully grated and planned to ice thickly.
In the midst of her work she made a distressing discovery. The linen
cloth for the table was soiled!
"I'm just as sure as I can be that it was clean in the drawer last
night," Rosemary confided to Miss Parsons. "I looked the last
thing."
She had found it rolled up in a wad and stuffed at the furtherest
end of the table drawer. Not only was it rumpled, but it showed
several stains.
"I'll go home this noon and get one of ours," said Rosemary. "I
think I'll be glad when this fair is over."
"I think we'll all be glad," replied Miss Parsons, frowning a
little, for the cloth incident annoyed her. She, too, had been
certain it was clean the afternoon before.
Rosemary went home at noon, leaving half the cakes to do on her
return. A large bowl of chocolate icing stood on the table, covered
with a muslin cloth.
There was no one to see the kitchen door open slyly fifteen minutes
later, no one to see a figure dart in and make for the table. One
hand lifted the muslin cloth, the other reached for the large tin
salt shaker.
"Drop that!" said a voice peremptorily.
The shaker dropped to the floor with a clatter, and Fannie Mears
turned to face Mr. Oliver.
"What are you doing in here?" he asked sternly. "Did Miss Parsons
ask you to do anything to that bowl?"
At that moment Miss Parsons herself came into the kitchen.
"I was looking for you," Mr. Oliver explained, "and I saw Fannie
Mears about to shake something into that large bowl on the table. I
thought Rosemary Willis was working here this morning."
"She was--" Miss Parsons stooped to recover the shaker. "Salt!" she
ejaculated as she saw what it was. "Fannie Mears, I do believe you
were going to salt Rosemary's icing!"
Fannie began to cry.
"Did you salt the soup last fall?" asked the teacher sternly. "Did
you? Answer me, Fannie."
"Yes, I did," sobbed Fannie. "I got so sick and tired of hearing
about Rosemary and her cooking. I put in the salt while she was
looking at the tables in the dining-room with you. It makes me sick
to hear all the fuss people make about her being such a good cook."
Rosemary, breathless from running, burst in at that juncture, the
clean tablecloth under her arm.
"Rosemary," said Mr. Oliver gravely, "Fannie has just told us that
it was she who over-salted the soup at the Institute dinner--you
remember?"
"You did?" cried Rosemary, turning to the other girl. "Did you take
the needle-books you gave Shirley, too?"
Fannie nodded.
"Did you wad up the clean tablecloth for the cake table?" chorused
Rosemary and Miss Parsons together. "And spill tomato soup on it,
too?"
"Catsup," corrected Fannie.
"How can you be so horrid!" cried Rosemary in a burst of frankness.
"Well, it's your own fault," declared Fannie resentfully. "You've
got a swelled head over your cooking and I just wanted to make you
see you weren't so much, after all."
"But there were teachers from all over the State at the Institute
dinner," protested Rosemary. "If the dinner was spoiled, they would
blame the school because we were not better taught. And the fair is
for the hospital and if it doesn't go off right, the whole school
loses credit. Don't you see, Fannie, you weren't just hurting me,
but you were making the whole school fall down."
"You come down to the office with me, Fannie," said Mr. Oliver
sternly. "I think you and I will have a little talk and perhaps you
will see things in a clearer light afterward. Certainly your ideas
need to be set right, if you are to continue in school."
"Oh, dear, I hope he won't scold her," sighed Rosemary, beginning to
stir the chocolate mixture. "As long as she didn't get the salt into
this, I don't care, and I don't think Mr. Oliver should."
"He may think differently," said Miss Parsons briefly.