BRAVE VICTORIA
Almost at once, there was one very curious and amusing result of Madame
Bolande’s friendship for “Gladys de Milligan.” Madame, who apparently
took no interest in her own hair, professed great admiration for that of
the new pupil and offered to teach her a new and even fancier way of
arranging it.
One night, to that end, Madame mixed an exceedingly sticky something in
a cup—quince seed and water, Laura explained afterwards—and applied it
to Laura’s pale yellow locks. After plastering them down in large wet
rings all over Laura’s foolish head, Madame fished the remnant of an old
green veil from her untidy bureau drawer and tied it firmly over the
slippery mass. Her intentions were perfectly good but the result was
surprising.
By morning, the quince seed was dry and it was possible to brush the
stuff, in a powdery shower of white particles, from the mass of loose
curls. But alas! A shocking thing had happened. The dye in the green
veil had proved anything but permanent. It had spent the night
_running_. Poor Gladys Evelyn appeared late for breakfast with red eyes
and bright green hair. It was at least a month before her tangled locks
lost their verdant hue.
“Never mind, Gladys,” soothed Grace Allen. “Mermaids have green hair and
you know how beautiful _they_ are.”
Oddly enough, this curious mishap made several new friends for Gladys
among the girls, whose ready sympathy was aroused for an unfortunate
maiden who had to go about with pale green hair. Augusta Lemon was one
of those tender hearted young persons, Lillian Thwaite another. About
this time, too, Grace Allen began to wander about, arm in arm, with
Gladys.
Cora Doyle, to whom the Lakeville girls were greatly indebted for much
of the past history of Highland Hall, proved a likeable girl, after one
learned not to believe all that she said. Cora just naturally
exaggerated. When she was cold she was absolutely frozen. When she was
warm, she was positively boiled. If she possessed one black and blue
spot she _knew_ she had ten thousand and if she were slightly indisposed
she was positive she was dying. In short, she called “Wolf, Wolf,” when
the wolf was conspicuously absent.
This trait of Cora’s was beginning to lead to embarrassing consequences.
Cora’s wild statements in school were always taken with a grain of salt.
Worse than that, her own people wouldn’t believe her. Even when she
outgrew her shoes and wrote home for larger ones, they were sure she
only meant more stylish ones; so poor Cora limped about in short shoes
and acquired a corn. And now she had a new trouble. Whether it was
basketball or the extra pie that she ate under the porch with Maude, no
one knew, but Cora began suddenly to grow very rapidly. Her sleeves and
her skirts were visibly retreating and she was showing more wrist and
more stocking than was considered becoming.
“My folks won’t _believe_ me,” wailed Cora, reading her letter from
home. “I’ve _told_ them that my knees show and my sleeves are up to my
elbows and they won’t _believe_ me.”
“But your skirts _aren’t_ up to your knees,” laughed Marjory.
“Anyway, they’re getting there and I have to stay up nights letting out
hems.”
“Never mind,” consoled Jean, “your folks will see for themselves, when
you go home for Christmas. Of course you may have to go in a paper bag—”
“That’s just the trouble. I _don’t_ go home for Christmas—I live too far
away. I’m going to visit Maude in Chicago—and it’s _her_ folks that will
see for themselves how many miles of legs and wrists I’m showing.”
“That’s what you get for stretching things,” laughed Henrietta. “Your
arms and legs have caught it.”
“_I_ didn’t get any letter at all,” grumbled Mabel. “Anybody gets more
than I do.”
“Cheer up,” said Jean. “Perhaps you’ll have two tomorrow. In the
meantime you can read mine—there’s quite a lot of Lakeville news in it.”
“Wait a minute, girls,” called Helen Miller, climbing up on the platform
beside Sallie. “Have any of you seen my amethyst pendant? I _thought_ I
left it in a little box on my dresser, but I _may_ have worn it out and
dropped it. Anyway, if you find one, it’s mine.”
Several of the girls looked at one another significantly.
Queer things were happening at Highland Hall. There were mysterious
disappearances; but whether they were due to carelessness or whether
they were due to theft, no one could say. The fact remained. Various
things of more or less value had vanished; and their owners were both
puzzled and distressed. Hazel Benton had somehow lost her wrist watch,
Ruth Dennis mourned a gold pencil that usually dangled from a ribbon
about her neck, Mabel’s sentimental roommate, Isabelle, could not find
the large gold locket containing Clarence’s picture—_that_ vanished,
Isabelle declared, while she was taking a bath, the _only_ time she
didn’t have it on.
Then, one morning, there was a scene in the dining room, where the girls
and the teachers were eating their breakfast rolls and the two neat
maids were passing the coffee. Madame Bolande, all excitement, and with
her black dress face-powdered from collar to hem and her hair even
wilder than usual, rushed into the dining room and declared volubly that
two ten dollar bills had disappeared from the stocking under her bed.
“And,” declared Madame, balefully, “eet ees zat Mees Henrietta zat have
taken zem. She ees the most baddest Mademoiselle zat I have een my
class.”
At this point, just when things were getting really interesting, Doctor
and Mrs. Rhodes rose hastily from their chairs, seized Madame by the
elbows and escorted her quite neatly from the public gaze. The girls
would have been glad to hear more.
Fortunately no one believed Madame’s accusation of Henrietta because all
the girls knew how little love was lost between that lively girl and the
untidy French woman. Madame always blamed Henrietta for anything that
happened. Occasionally she was right, because Henrietta was a young
bundle of mischief, with no respect whatsoever for Madame Bolande; but
the girls knew that Henrietta was no thief. And Henrietta, far from
appearing downcast at Madame’s outrageous words, giggled cheerfully and
considered it a joke.
And then something else happened that turned even Madame’s unjust
suspicion away from Henrietta. There was a burglar scare, a _real_
burglar scare, in Hiltonburg. It lasted three weeks, during which time
suddenly intimidated householders locked _all_ their doors instead of
just a few, bought catches for every one of their windows and caused
themselves agonies of discomfort by putting their valuables away in
supposedly burglar-proof spots overnight. Whether or not there really
was a burglar at the bottom of this alarm nobody was able to discover;
but the scare was certainly big enough and genuine enough while it
lasted to upset the entire community. It started in the heart of the
village, worked itself gradually along the State road, and, by the time
it was a week or ten days old, crept through the hedge that surrounded
Highland Hall and right into the house itself.
For days the girls talked of nothing else. Of course the different girls
were affected in different ways. The three Seniors moved into one room
and slept three in a bed, with their valuables under the mattress.
Little Lillian Thwaite couldn’t think of the burglar without turning
faint. Alice Bailey’s big black eyes grew so much bigger and blacker at
mention of him that the sight always sent Augusta Lemon, who was
particularly sympathetic, into spasms of fear. Bettie refused to walk
through the corridors alone, even by broad daylight.
Victoria Webster was of different fiber. “Victoria,” as everybody knows,
means “A Conqueror.” It certainly seemed as if this particular bearer of
the name had conquered fear. At any rate she was not afraid. Moreover,
she was not only courageous but she bragged about it until the other
girls were just a little tired of it.
“I’d like to see the burglar I’d be afraid of,” boasted Victoria. “See
here, Lillian, if you and Augusta and Bettie are afraid, I’ll move into
the West Dormitory and take care of you.”
“I wish to goodness you would,” declared Lillian. “Bettie’s all right,
but Augusta and I are all alone in number twenty-six.”
“Do move in today,” pleaded Augusta. “There’s a vacant bed—really,
that’s one reason why the room is so scary. It’s bad enough to have to
look under one’s own bed without having that extra one—we’ve been taking
turns. Let’s go and ask Miss Woodruff to let you come—she’s the matron
in our corridor, you know.”
“I was about to suggest that very thing,” replied Miss Woodruff,
regarding burglar-proof Victoria with a quizzical eye. “If this brave
Victoria can instill some of her surplus courage into this quaking
Lillian and this shuddering Augusta, by all means let her do it.”
“Victoria is really almost too courageous,” remarked Mrs. Henry Rhodes,
when the girls had left the school room. “She just bristles with
bravery. I’d like to frighten her just once. She’d have made a fine boy,
wouldn’t she, with those broad, sturdy shoulders!”
“She’d have made a blustering one. I suspect that if she _had_ been one,
every other boy that knew her would have been tempted to put her bravery
to the test. I don’t think that boys take as kindly to braggarts as
girls do.”
But even the girls, with the exception of timid Lillian and terrified
Augusta, began to grow tired of Victoria’s boasting; for, braced by the
admiring devotion of her roommates, Victoria could talk of nothing but
her own bravery.
“If a burglar came,” Victoria would brag, “I’d look him straight in the
eye and say: ‘See here, Mr. Burglar, I want to talk to you as man to
man. I take it you’re a man of sense. Your time is valuable. You’re
wasting it here. We’ve only thirty cents a week pocket money. If you
were mean enough to take it all you wouldn’t get much. Our jewels came
from the five and ten cent store; so just run along to a place where
they really _have_ money.’”
“Would you _really_?” demanded Augusta.
“Yes, I would. I’ve never seen the time yet when I’ve really been afraid
of anything.”
“They say,” quavered Lillian, “that they found footsteps—yes, Marjory, I
meant foot-prints—under the Browns’ dining room window last Friday—only
three houses from this one. Oh, I’m so scared I can’t eat my meals.”
“Don’t be alarmed,” said Victoria. “You have _me_.”
Victoria had bragged all day. She was still bragging when she climbed
into bed, with Lillian’s cot at her left, Augusta’s at her right.
An hour later, the west corridor was wrapped in silence; or it would
have been if nine girls had not assembled in Henrietta’s room to whisper
excitedly in one another’s ears. Inadvertently, they whispered too in
Miss Woodruff’s, as she stood listening just outside the door. Miss
Woodruff was not a prying person. She was merely assuring herself that
the noises that she couldn’t help hearing were made by girls, not
burglars.
“Good!” whispered the pleased teacher as she gathered the gist of this
animated buzzing. “It’s a thing I’d love to do myself. Victoria had it
coming to her. I shall aid and abet those merry plotters by staying very
sound asleep for the next hour.”
Whereupon Miss Woodruff very gently closed her own door and to all
appearances had finished her matronly duties for the night.
Ten minutes later, a small white scout slipped noiselessly down the dark
corridor toward the room in which Victoria was sleeping. Presently she
slipped back into Henrietta’s.
“All three are sound asleep,” reported Jane. “You could stick pins into
Victoria and she wouldn’t know it. Now’s the time for action. Don’t
waste a minute. She’ll never be sounder asleep than she is now.”
“Jane,” whispered Henrietta, “you and Marjory must get into those two
empty beds in the room directly across the hall from Victoria’s and
_stay_ in them long enough to get them warmed up, so we can move those
other two girls into them. We’ll wait fifteen minutes longer. But if
Lillian and Augusta _should_ wake up, we’ll just have to whisk them into
a closet and clap our hands over their mouths.”
For perhaps three quarters of an hour that night, Miss Woodruff heard
the light patter of bare feet on the corridor matting, the subdued
whisperings of girlish voices, the quickly hushed clattering of wood
against wood, of metal against crockery, the dragging of bulky objects
through narrow doorways. These sounds were punctuated by little gusts of
stifled laughter, followed each time by brief periods of absolute
silence.
“I do hope,” she whispered, “they’ll succeed. Victoria certainly needs
taking down. Dear me, how Marjory giggles! She was never designed for a
career of successful burglary.”
After a time the slight brushing of exploring hands and fluttering
garments against the corridor walls, told of the otherwise silent flight
of nine girlish forms down the long, dark hallway. Then Henrietta’s door
closed with a tiny click and for fully fifteen minutes afterwards sounds
of suppressed mirth sifted back to Miss Woodruff’s patient but approving
ears.
The house was silent when the great clock in the lower hall boomed
“One.” Victoria, who had been dreaming in an entirely unprecedented
manner, suddenly awoke, to experience a curious sense of physical
discomfort. Something was wrong. She groped for the bedclothes. They
were gone. She stretched out both hands and her groping fingers came in
contact with a firm, level, cold surface not unlike hardwood floor. She
moved her fingers—it _was_ floor. No other polished surface had those
regularly recurring cracks, Victoria, much alarmed, crept on hands and
knees, about the empty room. The window was open, the door closed. With
a little gasp of relief, she opened it.
“Thank goodness!” breathed tremulous Victoria, groping about in the
hallway, “I’m not locked in. But where in the world am I? Here’s another
door.”
It opened. Here, window shades were up and puzzled Victoria made out the
outlines of three beds. Her bare toes touched the big fur rug that she
knew belonged to Anne Blodgett, her opposite neighbor. The feel of a
familiar object in this world of uncertainties was a comforting
sensation.
“Anne!” gasped chattering Victoria, plunging bodily into Anne’s bed.
“I’m frightened to pieces! If that was my room that I’ve just come out
of there isn’t a thing left in it. My bed—even Lillian and Augusta have
been stolen. Burglars—or something—carried off every single thing but
me. I suppose I was too heavy. I found the window open.”
Anne giggled. There were giggles from the other beds. Victoria guessed
the truth. Then having much good sense back of her shortcomings she
giggled too.
“Well,” she laughed, “that was a great joke on me, all right. I might be
brave enough if I happened to be awake; but what’s the use of courage
when a burglar with any enterprise at all could carry me right off to
the next county without waking me up.”
“Did you _really_ think it was a sure enough burglar?” asked Anne.
“Yes, I did,” returned honest Victoria, snuggling closer to Anne’s warm
body, “and I was simply scared pink. When I found that window wide open
instead of just a few inches I was _sure_ somebody had climbed in and
carried off everything but _me_—and I wasn’t sure he _hadn’t_ taken me
as well. I could just _see_ a great big black burglar going up and down
a long ladder, with bundles on his back, and a partner down below to
help him with the heavy ones.”
“We didn’t mean to scare you as much as _that_,” said Anne, “but you
certainly are a fine sleeper. We pulled you around a lot.”
“My mother always said I could outsleep the sleepiest of the ‘Seven
Sleepers’ and I guess she was right. But I’m not the _only_ one, Where’s
Miss Woodruff all this time? I thought she _never_ slept.”
“Well, she did tonight,” said Anne, supposing she was telling the truth.
“And it’s lucky for us that she did.”
“But how did you ever move Lillian and Augusta without waking them?”
“We _didn’t_. Lillian jumped up the minute we touched her but Jane told
her what we were doing so she pitched right in and helped. But Augusta
woke right up in the middle of the corridor and began to bleat like the
lost sheep of Israel so Henrietta stuffed a stocking in her mouth—one of
your thick woolen ones—and jammed her into the clothes press. We had
quite a time explaining that we were _not_ the burglar. We handed her
Jane’s flashlight so she could _see_ it was us; but she turned it on
herself and that frightened her more than ever. She shivered and made
queer noises, so Maude had to sit beside her on a lot of shoes and hold
her hand for the longest time—and you know Maude hates to hold hands;
but Augusta’s all right now. Now move over, Vicky, and take another of
your famous naps. You’re welcome to half of my bed as long as you don’t
take your half out of the middle.”
The burglar scare subsided gradually and Victoria returned to her own
corridor to room with Gladys de Milligan.
“I wouldn’t have picked _her_ out,” sighed Victoria, “but Gladys
_wanted_ me—I’m sure I can’t see why.”
“_I_ should have thought,” said Marjory, “she’d like a more wide awake
roommate so she could _talk_ all night. Gladys does love to talk.”
“Not at night,” returned Victoria. “She lets me go to sleep at nine
o’clock sharp and that’s the last I hear of her until morning.”