It was Hallowe'en, so much more thrilling in the city than in the small
place which Betty Lee formerly called home. In the different suburbs,
like villages themselves, children were already appearing on the street
in costumes and masks, although it was scarcely dark. Many of them
carried baskets, for in gypsy fashion, perhaps, they were accustomed to
receive contributions from the persons whose bells they rang.
Mrs. Lee did not like the custom and would not allow Dick or Doris to
"beg," as she called it. "Have all the fun you want in costume," she
said, "but don't ask for charity!" Mr. Lee made no mention of the fact
that he intended to trail the children a little to see that they were
not carried away by the freedom of the night, but he told his wife that
Policeman Leary would be "on the job" and that he was an easy-going soul
when children were concerned. Mrs. Lee was not so sure that easy-going
would do on Hallowe'en, but her husband explained. "He will not stand
for any destruction of property, particularly in this neighborhood, but
he's not likely to arrest children or be hard on them."
From the standpoint of Dick, Doris and Betty, everything was lovely.
Even little Amy Lou was permitted to dress up and as she made an
adorable little gypsy, with a fetching mask balanced on her small nose,
Doris was rather proud to lead her forth. "We'll bring you right back if
you get fussy, though," warned Dick, "and I have to go with the boys
pretty soon."
"Oh, Dickie, I won't fuss, honest! And Dorry will take care of me, won't
you Dorry?"
"Yes, for a while, anyhow, as long as you ought to stay out. I wish you
were going to be at home, Betty!"
"I don't," frankly replied Betty, who was in front of the mirror seeing
how she looked in the small black mask, from whose openings her eyes
twinkled. "But you will have lots of fun, and if you give Amy Lou a
grand little outing, she'll be angelic when she comes in; for Mother's
going to have a little Hallowe'en party for her, all by herself, with a
great surprise!"
As Betty spoke, she looked down at the tiny gypsy, very solemn and
important now. Amy Lou smiled up, however, with a smile much like that
with which her older sister was regarding her. "Give me a name, Betty!
Give me a name!" she demanded, "a gypsy name!"
"Oh, you're the Queen of the gypsies, the Princess Maria Sophia
Cleopatra Amy Lou."
"All right," shouted Amy Lou, running out of the bedroom to follow
Doris, who was ready to start.
Betty's costume was not one as hastily fabricated as those of the other
children for her mother, realizing that she was to mingle with other
boys and girls who would be well costumed, had gone to considerable
trouble to make her "little girl" pretty. Betty was Titania of the
fairies and was airily dressed in white with "spangles" appropriately
attached, Roman pearls around her young neck, several tinkling bracelets
on her arms and a few tiny silver bells so disposed that they sounded a
little as she walked. And now her mother brought a warm wrap for her
shoulders and the long, shrouding domino that she was to wear over all.
What fun!
There followed the ride to the party in Mr. Lee's car and a merry
good-bye to him as she joined the company of shrouded figures or funnily
costumed ones that were descending from automobiles, or entering the
gates, or being ushered in at the door of the house. My, it was going to
be a large party, but Marcella had told her at school that she had
decided not to have it confined to juniors at all. "I owe such a lot of
the girls, and so I'm going to have--everybody!"
It was not quite that, to be sure, but the upstairs rooms were full
where wraps were being laid aside. How funny not to know a soul to speak
to! But Carolyn had told her what her costume would be and she had
confided what hers would be. Perhaps Carolyn knew about some of the
others.
"Oh, aren't you sweet!" squealed somebody in a high, assumed voice.
"Look, girls, here's the queen of the fairies. Now, who is she? Gilt
hair, cute chin and a dimple or two!"
Betty laughed at the description. So she had gilt hair, had she? That
hair had been arranged as she never wore it before. She did hope that
she wouldn't be found out right away; yet this girl was a tall one and
nobody she knew, she imagined. But she picked up her fairy wand, laid
aside while she removed her wraps, and waved it regally toward the
speaker. She, too, tried to disguise her voice as she said, "The fairy
queen bestows honors and gifts for tonight!"
At that a slim little person in a gay gypsy costume ran up, holding out
her palm. "Cross my palm with a nickel, Titania, and I'll tell you a
fortune, for even the fairies don't know everything!"
The gypsy's voice was pitched low and rang a little hollow; but surely
Betty knew that hand and arm, all covered with rings, beads and
glittering gold or brass! "Oh, it's you, Gypsy, isn't it?" she whispered
in the gypsy's ear. "I might know that you would be a real gypsy
tonight! You look darling!"
"Then I didn't fool you a little bit! I hope I have better luck with
other people. Was it my voice?"
"No, your hand, Gypsy. And did you know me right off?"
"No, honey, not till you said 'Gypsy' just now. Nobody else calls me
that much--yet."
"Yet is a good word, Kathryn. After tonight you may be called that more.
Let's go around together, then, the Gypsy Queen and the Fairy Queen,
that is, I'm _supposed_ to be it."
Together Kathryn Allen and Betty Lee descended the stairs where their
feet sank into a soft carpet. Below, on either side of the hall, large
rooms stretched out, opening in to the hall with its pillars and
draperies. "What a lovely home," said Betty.
"Yes, isn't it. I've never been here before. And aren't the Hallowe'en
decorations cute?"
Arm in arm the girls entered at the right, where a sort of receiving
line seemed to be. And there was Marcella, without her mask, yet covered
with a domino which concealed her costume. "Hello, girls," she greeted
them. "I'm sorry not to be able to speak your names, but I think you
need no introduction for I can guess what you are without any trouble.
Titania, greetings. By what name shall I call your friend?"
"Allow me to present the Gypsy Queen, Miss Waite," said Betty with mock
formality.
"Happy to meet you. Titania, let me introduce the Sultan of Turkey and
the Pirate of Penzance."
Two tall lads stood just beyond Marcella. Betty shook hands with a
richly dressed "Sultan" and a wildly equipped pirate, who looked very
handsome and bent over Betty's hand like some cavalier of old. Betty
wondered if these boys were guests or just on a sort of receiving
committee. If the pirate were one of the boys in school, he must be a
senior or one of the older junior boys she was sure.
Two boys, who had been chatting with some others, turned back to be
introduced to Betty and Kathryn by the pirate and Betty understood that
they, too, properly belonged in the receiving line. All were masked
except Marcella, who wanted to meet her guests in her proper person.
"The thing to do next," said one of the girls, "is to go through the
main rooms, see the decorations, visit the tent and have your fortune
told, go and bob for apples or do some of the other stunts, whatever you
can get in before the masked dancing begins. We're going to have the
old-fashioned square dances just as soon as everybody is here. But of
course, you're to talk to the other girls and boys and try to find out
who they are--oh, you'll see what to do. Marcella has somebody to tell
you."
Kathryn and Betty, however, did not feel like fortunes yet. They looked
all around for Carolyn, who evidently had not arrived, and had an
amusing conversation with a rollicking clown, who turned out to be, so
they thought, Chet Dorrance; but he would not acknowledge it when
Kathryn said that she "guessed it was Chet." Betty hoped that Ted was
there among some of the tall figures. He probably knew Marcella.
"It's a good thing we've been having the funny old dances in 'gym,'
isn't it?" asked Kathryn. "Do you suppose the boys know 'em?"
"They can learn. I imagine we'll all be told what to do. Besides, nobody
has to dance that doesn't want to."
Carolyn came and found the girls, though she was claimed almost
immediately by another clown, very spotty as to his ruffled and bulging
suit and wearing at first a mask which covered his entire face, but that
proved too hot. He had an ordinary mask in his pocket, he told Carolyn,
who encouraged him to put it on. "Get into a corner and whisk off that
hot mask," she advised. "I'll turn my back to you and hand you the
little one."
"You won't give me away if you happen to see?"
"Of course not. I will _keep your secret_ till we unmask!" she added, in
lofty tones, then giggled.
Meantime, Betty decided that she would have her fortune told. Kathryn
said that she would do it, too, and see what the other gypsy looked
like.
The tent was a flimsy affair, as one put up in a drawing room would
necessarily be. The fortune-teller was one of the older girls, who did
it very cleverly. Her costume was not like Kathryn's, but very gay with
sashes and ribbons, beads and jewelry of all sorts. Her long earrings
glittered and the wide gold bracelets that she wore jingled as they were
struck by other loose narrow ones.
"I see that you will have to make a great choice," she said to Betty, as
Betty stretched forth her capable little hand and the gypsy pored over
it, or looked at as much of Betty's face as she could see.
"You have gifts. You might have a career. You are musical and there are
some practical lines in your hand, too. Your life line is good--yes, I
see a long life for you. You are rather creative."
"What is the great choice?" asked Betty.
"Oh, yes. It's the usual choice between marriage and a career."
"Couldn't I have both?"
"It doesn't work," laughed the gypsy, forgetting her pose. "I mean to
say that you may have several serious love affairs and you may choose to
marry. When you take your mirror tonight and your candle and look in the
mirror, repeat this charm; for it will drive away the goblins and
witches and other evil spirits and you may really see the one you are to
love best!"
The gypsy handed Betty a piece of paper, cut from a gay Hallowe'en strip
of some sort. It was folded and the gypsy warned her not to open it
until just before she "performed the fatal rite."
"It will lose its power if you do," said she. "No, friend gypsy, let me
see what the fates have for you. Oh, yes. That's a nice hand, good
lines, some mentality, not too much, some gifts; you will marry and
there will be several, one, two, three children, a long life--but beware
a dark woman who will try to come between you and the man you love!"
"She isn't so good," laughed Kathryn after she and Betty left the tent,
"but she was jolly all right. If it is a dark woman, it can't be you,
Betty, so we'll remain friends, I see."
"I suppose there's some arrangements for the mirror stunt," said Betty.
"Oh, there's the music--let's see where it is. Why, Gypsy, Marcella has
a real orchestra--or a number of the pieces anyhow. Listen! They're
tuning up!"
The fun of the old-fashioned dances began. The Pirate of Penzance made
straight for Betty, who wondered more than ever who he could be. He was
evidently speaking in his natural voice, but she had never heard it
before, at least it was not at all familiar. Marcella must know him very
well, Betty thought, for she noticed a private confab between the two.
Her pirate was very graceful, she thought, and his costume, with its
dark red and dark blue, and gay sash with its array of knives, was a
good one. The knives he laid aside for the dances, but assumed them
again when it was announced that the company would now proceed to the
basement where witches and goblins were holding their annual frolic. "Be
very careful," announced the Pirate of Penzance, "and the witches will
be friendly."
Down the stairs to the large basement with its concrete floor, tripped
the company. Except for the part devoted to the furnaces, the place was
decorated and the only light came from large pumpkins, amusingly cut and
containing the customary candles. A hollow-voiced witch in a long black
robe stood at the door and odd little goblins and black cats and other
appropriate Hallowe'en figures hung from the low ceiling of the cellars.
Betty had not seen the place to bob for apples, mentioned by the girl of
the receiving line, but here she found it, and groups of boys and girls
separated to perform the various Hallowe'en stunts provided. The Pirate
of Penzance had held Betty's arm coming down stairs, but now, with the
girl she thought was Marcella--indeed it _must_ be--he was guiding this
one or that one and helping to start the fun. _Could_ it be Ted
Dorrance? He was tall enough, but no; he was good-looking but his chin
was different and his mouth firmer some way; and if it were Ted, he had
stained his skin darker, that was all.
But Betty had little time to think. She was doing things with the rest,
with boys and girls whose identity she did not know. Neither Kathryn nor
Carolyn were in sight, though the light was dim enough in this spooky
place, and they might be around.
And now her turn came to go into the "hole in the wall," a jog of some
sort in the solid masonry, before which a black curtain fell. By the
light from a widely grinning pumpkin Betty read the charm which was
supposed to keep her from baleful influences:
"O Witches and Goblins, by this little light,
Please send me the face of my true love tonight!"
"Say it out loud," prompted a voice behind Betty. The black witch stood
there.
"All right. Do I light my candle first?"
"Yes." The witch, who wanted to laugh herself and chuckled a little now
over something Betty wondered about, held out a match.
Betty scratched the match on the rough stone of the basement's big
partition. It went out and so did a second one. There was a little
draught somewhere, that made the curtain shake a little.
"Don't let the third one go out," warned the witch, now solemn and
speaking with a deep voice. "When the third one fails, the bad luck
hails!"
"How awful!" cried Betty, giggling as she struck the third match. But
she held her hand so that the little flame was sheltered from the
draught and the candle was lit successfully.
"Better watch the flame while you go behind the curtain," suggested the
witch in almost human tones, "and don't set anything on fire. Here's the
mirror."
Darkness met Betty as she passed beyond the curtain. She felt like
examining the place, especially when she heard a door softly close. It
seemed right by her--oh, her candle went out! Oh, but it was spooky.
Well, she'd brace up, say her little charm and pretend when she went out
that it had been all right.
"O Witches and Goblins, by this little light,
Please send me the face of my true love tonight!"
Betty's voice was a little unsteady. It wasn't any fun to be in this
unknown spot all in the dark. That thick curtain behind her didn't let
in a bit of light. She'd wait just the appropriate moment when she would
be supposed to look in the mirror and then _wouldn't_ she skip out!
But in that little moment a match struck close by her and while she
could not help a low exclamation, her candle was lit for her and a voice
whispered, "Good work. You didn't squeal or anything. I was here just
for fun, but I didn't blow your candle out. I shut the door that had
sprung open. See?"
"Oh!" gasped Betty, looking at the brown hands that lit the candle.
"Now you shall see somebody, if it isn't your own true love," whispered
the voice. "Look in your mirror, Titania!"
Betty looked. She saw the dark costume of the Pirate of Penzance, whose
amused face, _without the mask_, smiled at her from the mirror. "Oh!"
she gasped again.
"Now let me see _you_ without the mask," whispered the lips in the
mirror.
Betty handed her candle to the pirate and obediently took off her mask,
smiling up with confidence into the "nice face" that the supposed pirate
carried.
"Thanks," said he, "Good-bye."
The pirate blew out the candle this time and Betty heard the door near
at hand softly close. He had gone, and Betty lost no time in appearing
beyond the curtain. The witch looked suspiciously at her and Betty was
glad that the light was dim in the basement. She kept away from the rays
of the pumpkin.
"Didn't your light go out?" asked the witch. "I was talking to the next
masker but I saw no light for a moment through the crack by the
curtain."
"Yes, but--there was a match there--so I--well, I looked in the mirror
all right and, of course, I saw my true love!"
"Fine," said the girl to test her luck next. "Hurry up and give me a
match, please. That whole bunch that's bobbing for apples is coming here
next."
Betty was glad that there was opportunity for no more questioning, such
as "where did the match come from?" Why, what a funny time! The Pirate
of Penzance was nobody she had ever seen before. He must be some friend
of Marcella's who knew all about the place, basement and all. And wasn't
it nice of him to do that? He was quite clear that he wasn't her "true
love," though he looked older, older than Ted even, and perhaps he was
engaged to somebody. Of course! He was some University student, engaged
to some senior who was here. No, if she had been here, he wouldn't have
paid so much attention to Betty and danced with her so much. Well, then,
he was just helping Marcella with her party and having a lot of fun on
the side.
By this time Betty was used to mingling with the unknown, guessing at
who they were and joking with any one at all as it happened. She thought
she knew a few of the juniors, whom she had known as sophomores last
year. Then there was some of her own class she was pretty sure, boys
that would be invited to equalize the numbers of boys and girls, and she
knew what girls of her class had been invited. Size, however, was no
help, for even if juniors were supposed to be older and to be still
"growing," some of the juniors were shorter than some of the sophomores.
Carolyn Gwynne was going up from the basement as Betty reached the
stairs. "Oh, Betty, I mean Titania," she cried, lowering her voice. "I
guess nobody heard that. Excuse me. Did you go in to look in the mirror
and did they have the big mirror up then?"
"No. I mean I went in to see my true love in a glass, but I was given a
little hand mirror."
"Well, when I went in they had a square mirror propped on a sort of
ledge in front of me. But the next girl had just gotten inside when she
dropped her candle and squealed terribly and I suppose she reached out
to grab something and down came the mirror and smashed like everything!
"She came out all scared to pieces and the witch started to tell her it
was bad luck all in fun, but the girl cried and Marcella came running to
tell her that the mirror didn't matter and there wasn't any such thing
as good and bad luck really."
"Which girl was it?"
"She took off her mask, but I didn't know her. It was some junior girl,
I think. Marcella took her upstairs. Why, she is in a colonial costume,
Martha Washington or Dolly Madison or something like that."
"I don't believe Martha and Dolly would dress alike, Carolyn," laughed
Betty. "Let's go and sit down somewhere. I think the orchestra's going
to play again. So many of the crowd have come up from 'witchdom' now. It
was sort of spooky downstairs, but such fun."
"Wasn't it. Did you see anything in your mirror, Betty?"
"Oh, of course," laughed Betty, who wasn't going to tell. Not even
Carolyn, or Kathryn were to know about that little interchange between
Titania, queen of the fairies, and a Pirate of Penzance!
Betty was conscious of some inward excitement later, when the little
orchestra played familiar and lively tunes and the invitation to supper
was given. What exclamations and little squeals and giggles and happy
laughter there were when the unmasking took place at the tables.
"I knew all the time it was you!"
"Oh, you fooled me perfectly! I hadn't an idea!"
"I thought it was you, and then you had changed your voice so that I was
not sure."
"You gave yourself away when you used that funny expression about Jean.
I'd heard you say that before."
"Yes, and when you wrinkled up your forehead I knew _you_!"
Such were some of the merry expressions.
Betty was quite impressed; but she looked all around, as best she could
without seeming to look, to see if she could see the Pirate of Penzance.
But he was nowhere to be seen and much else engrossed her attention, her
pretty place card, the little Hallowe'en souvenir at each plate, the
good supper, light but savory, and the general jollity. Betty had
scarcely given a thought to Lucia, except to wonder if a pretty Italian
peasant could be Lucia. But she found herself at the same table with
Lucia, who was in a beautiful costume as the Queen of Sheba. Real jewels
flashed on her neck and arms and Betty wondered how she dared wear them.
"Are you all over your being bitten by the snake, Lucia?" someone asked.
"Oh, yes. I want to forget it. It didn't make me sick at all, though
Mother kept me at home from school for several days. She wasn't sure
what sort of a snake it was, you see, so she had everything attended to.
I'm going on hikes and everything just the same, though I'll not try to
pick a flower without looking. That serpent ought to have been in winter
quarters and wasn't."
"Are you going in for athletics?"
"Some of it. I'm going to swim, like Betty Lee, and then I ride, though
I may not enter their course here. I play hockey on the ice, but I don't
know about it here. You have regular class teams, don't you, and have to
be elected in some way before you can be on one?"
"Yes, in a way you're chosen."
"Well, I'm not an applicant for anything." Lucia smiled but tossed her
head up a little proudly, and a look was exchanged between two of the
sophomores. If Lucia played hockey in Switzerland, she might not be a
bad person to have on the team. Perhaps she could be persuaded to "try
out" for it. They would get her to play on a "scrub team" some time for
fun.
But what was that junior saying?
"What is a mere hockey team to the Queen of Sheba?"