Belle Rogers was not always the bewitchingly pretty, dimpling, smiling
young girl who had endeavored to annex Billie.
And when she was not pretty, Belle's friends liked to keep well out of
her vicinity. At such times two little white dents appeared on each side
of her nose. Her large, china blue eyes were transformed into wells of
steely gray and the smiling, baby mouth became two narrow white lips.
All the color left her cheeks, and people who did not know her would
exclaim:
"How faded and ill she looks!"
When Belle looked like this she was unusually quiet at first, but it was
the quiet which comes before a tornado, and it was only when the storm
burst that those unfamiliar with her ways realized that Belle had been
very, very angry.
This is what happened on the day after the exciting experience in
Boulder Lane, and all because Wilhelmina Campbell, true to her old
friends, the "Blue Birds," after being formally invited, had positively
declined to join the "Mystic Seven."
"I am sorry," she said, trying her best to be cordial, "but, you see,
the others had first claim on me because I have known them a long time
and I have already promised to become a Blue Bird."
"We asked you first," exclaimed Belle, in a preternaturally quiet tone
of voice.
"I don't see why that should make any difference," answered Billie,
feeling very uncomfortable.
"It makes a great deal of difference," answered Belle, who was always
gifted with a flow of words in the moments of her greatest anger. "You
are probably not familiar with the ways of schools and school societies.
I understand you have never been to school before."
"Oh, yes, I have. I went to school in Paris for three months and to
another in Dresden for a whole winter."
"This is America," went on Belle, in a slow, even tone, taking no other
notice of the interruption, "and if you decline the honor we have paid
you in the sophomore year, you will not only be blackballed in our
societies the other two years, but you will not receive any invitations
from me and my friends to our parties now or ever, and you will be
obliged to associate with the commonest and most ordinary girls in West
Haven. The children of cooks----"
"Mary Price," thought Billie. Mrs. Price had a tea room.
"The daughters of seamen----"
"Nancy!" said Billie out loud. Nancy's father was a sea captain.
"Yes, Nancy Brown," continued Belle, growing angrier every moment. "You
will simply be an outcast in West Haven, and I advise you to think the
matter over well before you decide to join that low, common crowd, for I
assure you it will be the last of you with us----"
Billie was so aghast at the insolence of the spoiled girl that she did
not attempt to interrupt the rush of words which seemed to flow from her
lips without any effort whatever. She was very angry herself, as a
matter of fact, but with the self-control she had learned from her
father, she determined to hold her peace until Belle had run down, as
she expressed it later to the other girls.
At last there came a pause, and Billie, who had been sitting on the
window ledge in the gymnasium swinging her feet and thinking of what she
was going to say when she was entirely prepared to speak, slipped down
to the floor and stood before the enraged girl like a brave soldier in
the face of battle.
But this was all she said, for Billie was really very much like a boy.
"I don't think it is any honor to join your club, or go with you and
your friends. I wouldn't give up Mary and Nancy and Elinor for twenty
Mystic Sevens. I'd rather go to boarding school any day, and that's
about the worst fate that could happen to me."
Then she turned on her heel and walked away, leaving Belle in the grip
of a tempest of sobs and tears. Such rages are quite like the West
Indian storms which sweep up the coast with a great blowing of wind and
then, after a tremendous roar of thunder, the downpour follows.
That night in her pretty chintz-hung bedroom in the beautiful Rogers
house, which was one of the show places of West Haven, Belle Rogers
planned her revenge. Her temples were throbbing and her whole body ached
with exhaustion. Tempers are really quite as devastating to the system
as the West Indian tornadoes are to the country over which they sweep.
"I'll get even with that rough tom-boy," she said out loud. "I'll pay
her back if it takes all winter to do it. I'll make her sorry she ever
came to West Haven, and I'll make the others pay, too. They'll see what
it means to interfere with me and my plans. Perhaps papa will give me a
motor car, only I'm afraid of the things, and I never could run one. My
hands are much too small and delicate to handle machinery."
"Belle, darling, do you feel any better?" asked Mrs. Rogers, anxiously,
outside the door.
Belle made no reply. It was her custom to pretend to be asleep when she
wished to be alone, and she wished now to spend a long uninterrupted
evening to herself, for her thoughts were very busy. A plan had come
into her head. It had sprung up suddenly, full-grown, as if it had been
secretly hatching in the bottom of her mind for a long time and now
appeared a matured scheme.
Her blood tingled at the notion. It was such an audacious, daring thing
that the very thought made her dizzy.
"I'll do it," she said at last, her mind made up. "I'll do it, and I'll
get only one person to help me, because it will take two to work it.
Now, who shall that person be? It would be best to ask a Blue Bird, but
which one?"
Her thoughts ran over the girls in the despised society, but there was
only one of the ten whom she would quite dare to approach. The others
were fiercely loyal to each other.
This possible traitor was a new girl in West Haven. Her name was
Francesca Alta, but her friends called her Fannie. She was the daughter
of Mme. Alta, a music teacher lately established in the town. Many of
the girls were taking music lessons of Mme. Alta, and Belle, who was one
of her pupils, often had opportunities of speaking to the little
dark-haired daughter, although she had only nodded to her coldly so far.
"I will speak to her to-morrow," she exclaimed, as she swallowed the
sleeping powder her indulgent mother always gave her after one of these
violent headaches.
In the morning Belle had regained her baby smile. The red had left her
nose and was now in its proper spots on her round, plump cheeks. Once
more her large blue eyes looked appealingly into the eyes of those she
honored with her glances. Belle never saw what she preferred to ignore,
and one of the most delightful sights of that bright September morning
was a red motor car filled with pretty young girls, which whirled into
the High School grounds, making a bright splash of scarlet against the
old gray walls of the building.
Belle did not see the "Comet" and its load, or would not see it, but
later, Billie, who never bore malice, bowed a cheerful good morning to
her enemy, and, to the surprise of the others, received a cordial bow in
return.
"I am sorry I was cross to you yesterday, Miss Campbell. Will you
forgive me?" Belle asked her.
"Yes, indeed," answered the warm-hearted young girl. "It's awfully nice
of you to admit it," and she secretly decided that the others were
rather hard on Belle Rogers, after all.
However, when the girls heard of the apology, they were skeptical.
"It's the 'Comet' that won her over," observed Nancy.
"I don't believe it," answered their new, inseparable friend, who after
two days' association was as intimate with the three girls as if she had
known them always, so rapidly do young girl intimacies grow.
"Something does seem to have happened to her," said Mary Price. "Perhaps
you gave her such a dressing-down, Billie, that she's turned over a new
leaf. She would never have stooped to talk to Fannie Alta before, but
she is doing it now, and look--will wonders never cease?"
The two girls were indeed in intimate conversation. They were walking
arm in arm up and down the campus, nibbling sandwiches. At West Haven
High School the girls either brought their luncheons with them to eat at
recess or bought sandwiches of that plucky, hard-working little woman,
Mrs. Price, Mary's mother, who made the sandwiches and brought them to
the school herself in a big basket.
That is why Mary Price had exclaimed, "Will wonders never cease?" She
had recognized the package of sandwiches in oil paper, which Belle
Rogers must have bought from her mother, and which she was now sharing
with dark, shabby little Fannie Alta.
"She used to say she would rather starve than eat one of mother's
lettuce sandwiches," Mary exclaimed, "but she appears even to have come
to that."
"If this is one of your mother's own, it's very delicious," exclaimed
Billie, gallantly turning the conversation into other channels. After
all, it was just as well not to form the habit of discussing Belle too
much. Her father had never approved of criticising people.
"It doesn't lead to anything but bilious headaches," he used to say.
"Sick, bilious headaches and a very yellow complexion. Critical people
always look like that, Billie, my girl."
Billie's complexion was clear and healthy. She had never had a bilious
headache in her life. But, then, she was not given to picking flaws in
other people's characters.
However, the novelty of the richest and proudest girl in West Haven
making friends with a poor music teacher's daughter was soon to be
eclipsed by a much more sensational and mysterious incident.
That afternoon, after school, when the four friends assembled in the
carriage shed for their usual spin home in Billie's motor car, they
found a note stuck conspicuously between the cushion and the back of the
seat. It was addressed in a large angular hand to "Miss Wilhelmina
Campbell and her friends, both boys and girls, especially Miss Butler,"
and inside it read:
"Keep quiet about Boulder Lane. You are watched and if you let a word
slip out, the punishment will come quickly."
"How ridiculous," exclaimed Billie angrily, when she had shown the note
to the others. "I have a great mind to write papa all about it, only it
would worry him to death. It is only cowards who write anonymous
letters, anyhow."
But she did not write to her father, and the other girls, too, were
silent on the matter.
They wondered many times who had put the note on the seat. Strangers
were not unusual in West Haven, where sailors and seamen often came
ashore, but the Girls' High School was at the other end of town and
visitors ashore seldom strayed so far away from the shops and the little
theatre.
"I'd like to know what their grudge is against the Butler family,"
Elinor had demanded, but no one could answer the question, and she was
still determined not to disturb her highly excitable father.