MANY SMALL MYSTERIES
Shortly before Christmas, Jean’s father, Mr. Mapes, turned up just in
time to whisk the Lakeville youngsters aboard their train. The girls
were so glad to see a friend from home that they all but wept tears of
joy. Quiet Mr. Mapes was quite pleased and embarrassed at their
rapturous greeting—even Henrietta having surprised him with a kiss.
“We’d be glad to see even a beggar from _home_,” explained Mabel
earnestly and with her usual frankness—and wondered why Mr. Mapes
laughed.
Mabel was to visit among her friends for the holidays. All the other
Highland Hall girls except homeless Sallie, Virginia Mason (a quiet girl
from far away Oregon) and poor old Abbie, who wasn’t exactly a girl,
departed to their homes for a two weeks’ vacation.
It wouldn’t be possible to describe _all_ the Christmas gifts that the
happy Lakeville girls received; but some of the more unusual ones
deserve mention. From Germany, Mrs. Bennett sent to each of the five
girls a lovely little Dresden pin of exquisite enamel. Mrs. Lombard, the
grateful mother of Laddie, the rescued castaway, presented to each a
beautiful gold locket containing a pleasing picture of her attractive
boy. Mrs. Slater had selected an interesting book for each of
Henrietta’s chums; and from Mr. Black, each girl received a beautiful
leather writing case “with a place for stamps and everything,” as Bettie
said joyfully. Mrs. Crane gave each girl a five dollar gold piece. But
Henrietta’s father had sent nothing to his family. This was both
puzzling and alarming. He had never before failed to send wonderful
gifts at Christmas time.
Of course the Lakeville girls had dispatched parcels to Sallie and had
written to her; so for once the post-girl had been able to deliver much
pleasant mail to herself.
There was only one trouble with that vacation. It didn’t last long
enough.
“Dear me!” said Henrietta, when Mr. Black had returned them all safely
to Highland Hall, “those were the shortest two weeks that ever
happened.”
This second coming to Highland Hall, however, was quite different from
the first; and much pleasanter. The early arrivals greeted the late
comers warmly and there was much hugging and kissing in the corridors.
With one exception, all the girls and all the teachers had returned. The
exception was Madame Bolande.
“I’m pretty sure she was fired,” confided Sallie, inelegantly. “She was
in a furious temper when she packed her trunk the day after you left.
And I wish you could have seen her room afterwards. Dust and powder and
rouge all over the place—I had to help Abbie clean up. She wore her
stockings until the feet were gone and then threw them under the bed.”
“I knew she was too awful to last,” said Hazel Benton. “But I did think
they’d be obliged to keep her for a whole year. I’m so glad they
didn’t.”
At first there was no regular French teacher. Elisabeth Wilson, one of
the Seniors, attempted to carry on the classes; but found it difficult
to undo Madame’s faulty work. Then one of the Theological students was
engaged temporarily; but so many extra girls among the day pupils
decided suddenly to take French that the young Theologian fell ill from
overwork. Then Henrietta offered to tide the classes over until Doctor
Rhodes should hear from the agency that was to supply the new teacher.
The three Seniors were regarded by the rest of the pupils with
considerable awe, and it is time that you were hearing more about them.
In the first place they were quite old—sixteen or perhaps as much as
seventeen; but as Seniors sometimes do, they kept their ages a dark
secret. The other girls were permitted to spend only thirty cents a week
for candy and other eatables. Not so the Seniors. They could spend all
the money they liked, provided their parents supplied it, and they did.
They could even send to Chicago for large boxes of candy or cream puffs
or Angel’s food cake and eat these delectable things at any hour of the
day or night, without interference. In the matter of clothes they were
not restricted to middies. They could wear what they liked and they did,
Eleanor Pratt was exceedingly dressy. Elisabeth Wilson was a walking
fashion plate and Beatrice Holmes of Indiana, managed to out-dress them
both. Occasionally, one or another of these superior young persons would
condescend to pass her box of chocolates to some of the younger girls;
but, for the most part, the proud and lofty Seniors, as Sallie said,
flocked by themselves and were not always polite when some thoughtless
young person from the lower forms “butted in.”
Their rooms were in the older part of the house and were much grander
than those of the other pupils. It meant a great deal to be a Senior—you
always spelled it with a very large S—at Highland Hall.
But being a Senior did not exempt Miss Pratt, Miss Wilson or Miss
Holmes—never did any other pupil venture to address them as Eleanor,
Elisabeth or Beatrice—from losing certain, small belongings.
Two weeks after the holidays, Miss Wilson reported the loss of a small
crescent pin, set with diamonds. Miss Holmes had searched her room in
vain for a valuable bracelet and Miss Pratt had broken a ten dollar bill
in order to buy a quarter’s worth of stamps—and the change had vanished
from her purse. Yes, she _had_ been careless to leave it in the pocket
of her coat in the cloak room; but that was no reason why any one should
have taken it.
“Anyway,” said Sallie, “we know now that it isn’t Madame Bolande who is
doing it; and that’s something.”
“Of course,” ventured Henrietta, “it couldn’t be one of the Rhodes
family. I know there is some sort of a mystery about them. They all have
sort of a queer, shifty look about them; and they all shut right up like
clams when you ask questions. You can’t even pry into poor old Miss
Emily’s past without frightening her. This is an old school; but except
for Miss Julia I can’t believe that the Rhodes people have been here
very long. Now _have_ they, Sallie?”
“I can’t tell you a thing,” declared Sallie. “I promised not to and I
can’t. There _is_ a sort of secret. It isn’t anything _very_ bad. It’s
just something that Doctor Rhodes thinks might make a difference in the
attendance if it were known—Goodness! I’ve told you more now than I
meant to. Please don’t talk about it, Henrietta.”
“Of course I won’t,” promised Henrietta, “but I’m just as curious as I
can be and I’m going to pump poor old Abbie.”
But poor old Abbie showed unexpected strength of mind; she put her
fingers into her ears and refused to listen to Henrietta’s
blandishments.
“It ain’t for me,” said Abbie, “livin’ here like I be, to be givin’
things away to prying young persons like you and that Jane Pool child
that’s always pesterin’ me about my past. I know what I know but you
ain’t goin’ to. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”
Every week, some time between three and five o’clock on Saturday
afternoon, every pupil, not excepting even the lofty Seniors, was
expected to visit the huge attic above the older portion of Highland
Hall. Here, arranged in a neat border all around the big room, were the
girls’ trunks. Only on Saturdays were the girls permitted to visit
them—it seemed, Bettie said, almost like getting back home to see them
again each week.
Near the windows were benches and numerous brushes and boxes of
blacking. It was here that the girls blacked their shoes, or whitened
them, according to their needs. Saturday, likewise, was the day for
that.
The third Saturday after Christmas, Mabel, always a little awkward, lost
her balance and fell backward into an open trunk. In her efforts to save
herself she clutched things as she crashed through the flimsy tray. She
came up with a ribbon belt in her hand. There was an odd buckle on the
belt. Mabel looked at it curiously. Bettie, polishing one of her best
black shoes glanced at it too. Then she looked at Mabel and lifted an
inquiring eyebrow. Then both girls stooped to look at the name on the
trunk. It was there in plain letters, “Gladys E. De Milligan.”
And then Gladys herself appeared suddenly at the top of the stairs with
a second armful of clothing to store in her trunk. She flew at surprised
Mabel like a small whirlwind and snatched the belt from her hand.
“What do you mean,” she stormed, “prying in my trunk! And taking my
things. I caught you doing it—I’ll tell all the girls.”
“I _didn’t_ pry in your trunk,” protested Mabel. “I just _fell_ in.
Goodness knows I didn’t _want_ to skin my shoulder on your old trunk;
and that belt is just what I got when I grabbed.”
“That’s the truth,” added Bettie.
Gladys locked her trunk ostentatiously, pocketed the key and marched
downstairs. Mabel looked at Bettie, Bettie looked at Mabel.
“The buckle on that belt looks a lot like the one that Helen Miller made
such a fuss about last fall,” said Mabel.
“I know it does.”
“Do you think we’d better say anything about it to the girls?”
“Let’s ask Jean.”
Now Jean was the kindest soul imaginable. Although she had known many
things to Gladys’s disadvantage, she had kept silence herself and had
influenced her little friends to keep silence likewise.
“Gladys may have found that buckle,” said Jean, “and of course it’s
possible that she and Helen had buckles just alike. I don’t _like_
Laura—I mean Gladys—but I don’t believe we’d better say anything against
her to the other girls.”
“She says things against us,” said Mabel. “She told Sallie that my
father was just a corn doctor and that all Bettie’s clothes came out of
missionary boxes and that Marjory’s Aunty Jane took in washing—and I
shan’t tell you what she said about _your_ folks but it was just awful.”
“Well, let’s not worry about it. The girls that we like best aren’t
going back on us for anything Gladys can tell them and we don’t have to
be mean just because _she_ is.”
“I suppose it is hard luck,” said Bettie, “to be born the kind of person
Laura is. I agree with Jean. Let’s forget her and think of pleasant
things.”
Laura was a clever girl in many ways. Naturally bright, she learned
easily. Naturally rather a forward child, not easily embarrassed, she
recited readily—in spite of her gum—and acquired good marks. She broke
very few rules. Even that rule that _every_ boarding school girl
breaks—the one about remaining in one’s own bed from the time the bell
rings for “Lights Out” until it rings again for rising, even that rule
was seemingly unbroken by Laura. At any rate, no one ever caught her
breaking it. She was rooming now with Victoria Webster in the North
Corridor, Victoria having returned thither after the burglar scare was
over.
Mrs. Henry Rhodes was matron of the North Corridor, where the Miller
girls, Ruth Dennis, Alice Bailey, Hazel Benton, quiet Virginia Mason and
some of the older girls roomed. Mrs. Henry, as the girls called her, was
easily the most attractive member of the Rhodes family. Quite a young
woman, she was both pretty and stylish in a quiet, very pleasing way.
Her abundant light brown hair was coiled neatly and becomingly about her
small head—she was slender—and not very tall—and Hazel Benton said that
she had an aristocratic nose. Most of the girls liked and admired her.
She was not particularly severe or exacting in her duties as matron—Miss
Cassandra Woodruff was made of much sterner stuff, as the West Corridor
girls knew to their sorrow. Mrs. Henry had once been a boarding school
girl herself, likewise a college girl, and her sympathies were with her
charges. It was suspected that she didn’t consider it a crime for
Dorothy Miller to slip across the hall into Ruth Dennis’s bed to giggle
over some joke, or for Hazel Benton to slide into Alice Bailey’s room
for a cough drop, or even for half a dozen of the girls to assemble in
Dora Burl’s room for a smuggled in, midnight spread of cream puffs; so
it is possible that Mrs. Henry didn’t listen, very hard when her charges
prowled about at night.
In addition to being a popular matron, she had proved an excellent
drawing teacher. Also her needlework classes were turning out good work.
She had been married only a short time when her husband died; and, as
Cora put it, looked more like a young lady than a widow.
“I wish,” groaned Maude, the day after Miss Woodruff had caught her
after “Lights Out” on her way to Cora’s room with a large box of cream
puffs under her arm, “that we could swap matrons with the North
Corridor. Mrs. Henry _knows_ that cream puffs have to be eaten fresh.”
“Yes,” agreed Cora, “it was certainly a crime about those cream puffs.
Four dozen of them at sixty cents, besides what we gave Charles for
smuggling them in. Eight of us chipped in with our whole week’s
allowance. And what did old Woodsy do but keep them in her warm room all
night, and then, after every last one of them had soured beyond hope,
she ordered them served for the whole school for lunch.”