A GIRL LEAVES SCHOOL
The next morning, during school hours, Mrs. Rhodes and Mrs. Henry Rhodes
searched Laura’s room. There was nothing in it that did not belong to
either Laura or her roommate Victoria Webster. Under the cover on the
dresser top they found Laura’s trunk key and carried it to the attic
trunk room.
There was nothing unusual about the tray of Laura’s trunk except the
large hole that Mabel had made by tumbling into it. But when the tray
was lifted out and several layers of clothing were removed, it looked
very much as if all the mysteries were solved. A fat little roll of
banknotes, tied up neatly with a pink ribbon, a candy box full of silver
coins, several pairs of silk stockings marked with the names of the
three Seniors, every article of jewelry that had been reported missing,
as well as some others that the careless owners had not yet missed.
[Illustration: It looked very much as if all the mysteries were solved]
“My opera glasses!” exclaimed Mrs. Henry.
“My real lace collar!” cried Mrs. Rhodes. “I suppose this _is_ Gladys’s
trunk?”
“Oh, certainly. Can’t you smell the perfume? Nobody else uses this kind.
Besides, her name is on the outside.”
“Yes, that’s right. Now, I wonder what we’d better do about this.”
“We’ll have to talk it over with Father. I’m afraid there’s no doubt
this time.”
“I’m sure there isn’t,” returned Mrs. Rhodes. “It’s the de Milligan girl
without question. I don’t know why I didn’t suspect her sooner.”
“Well, _I_ didn’t,” said Mrs. Henry. “And she was right in my own
corridor. I’m awfully sorry about all this.”
“I’d have been sorrier,” returned the older woman, grimly, “if it had
been any other girl. I never did like this one.”
When Laura was called into Doctor Rhodes’s office and invited to explain
how all those things had found their way into her trunk, she appeared to
be very much surprised. She was _sure_ she didn’t know. She said she
supposed that Sallie Dickinson had put them there, or if not Sallie, one
of the maids; or possibly Marjory Vale. Marjory was ever a deceitful
child, much given to thievery. She herself had often warned the other
girls against Marjory.
Laura, standing with her back against the wall, seemed quite calm and
unconcerned, except that she shifted her chewing gum from side to side
with greater frequency than usual.
Doctor Rhodes had rather a terrible eye. Two of them in fact. He fixed
them both on Laura’s unperturbed countenance and gazed so very sternly
at her that presently Laura began to quail. She gulped suddenly and
swallowed her gum. And then she began to stammer excuses.
She liked pretty things. She couldn’t resist taking things when it was
so easy to do it. Her fingers _liked_ to take things. She didn’t always
want what she had taken. Sometimes she wished afterwards that she hadn’t
taken them. Her father was stingy and wouldn’t give her expensive
trinkets. Her mother _would_ but didn’t have the money. Her mother
_wanted_ her to have nice things.
When did she take the things? Oh, at night sometimes. Her roommate,
Victoria Webster, slept like a log and didn’t miss her if she left the
room. Or daytimes, by getting upstairs ahead of the other girls it was
easy enough to dash into a room, grab a bracelet or a pin left
carelessly about and hide it in her pocket. There were plenty of chances
like that, when girls were so heedless with their belongings. Really, it
was the girls’ own fault _much_ more than hers. Yes, she _had_ put those
beads in Marjory’s pocket while the dress was on Marjory’s bed, and she
had placed that purse in Sallie’s room. She _wanted_ people to think
they had taken them—it had seemed a clever thing to do—perhaps it wasn’t
as clever as she had thought. But if Doctor Rhodes would just forgive
her _this_ time, she wouldn’t touch another thing, _ever_.
“But what about Sallie?” questioned Doctor Rhodes, hoping to find a
little redeeming conscience in Laura. “And that other youngster,
Marjory? How are _they_ to be cleared?”
“I don’t care about _them_,” returned vulgar little Laura,
hard-heartedly. “They’re just nobody. Marjory’s folks don’t amount to
anything—just a queer old aunt in a small town—and everybody knows
Sallie is just nothing—no folks or money or anything else. Now listen
(Laura _always_ said ‘Now listen’): _My_ father has made money in the
automobile business. He’s richer—”
“Do you mean to say,” demanded Doctor Rhodes, “that you’d actually be
willing to let those honest little girls rest under a suspicion that
they don’t deserve just because they happen to be poorer than you are?
That you’d hide behind them—”
“I don’t care anything about _them_,” repeated Laura, stubbornly.
“They’re nothing to _me_.”
“However,” returned Doctor Rhodes, “in simple justice, they will have to
be cleared—and they are _going_ to be cleared. _I_ care, if you don’t,
what happens to those children. It’s my duty to protect my pupils—”
“Well, then,” interrupted Laura, hopefully, “why not protect me?
Folks’ll forget all about it after awhile and _nobody’ll_ be hurt so
very much. Aw, come on, now. Just forget it all.”
“I’m going to tell the truth,” declared Doctor Rhodes, who was finding
Laura quite the most detestable child he had so far encountered. “There
is no place in this school for a dishonest girl or for a girl with so
little kindness for her fellow pupils. There is such a thing as school
spirit—”
“Well, anyhow,” pleaded Laura, “just wait another two weeks. I’m not
coming back after Easter vacation; so you might as well wait until then
before you give me away, if you’re going to do it. My mother has a
friend that says he’ll give me a good job in the movies; and that’s what
I’d _like_ to do. You can give those things back to their owners after
I’m gone and say any old thing you like about me. It won’t hurt me any
then.”
“Wouldn’t you _rather_ have people remember you with liking and
respect?” asked Doctor Rhodes, thoroughly shocked by Laura’s hardened
conscience. “Have you no shame at all?”
Laura shrugged her shoulders, a trick she had perfected by watching
Madame Bolande. She tilted her chin and partly closed her eyes—to show
her complete indifference to what people might think of her. She was not
at all pretty when she did these things.
“I can see no reason for sparing you in any way,” said Doctor Rhodes,
coldly. “You may go to your room now and write for your mother to come
for you at once. If she isn’t here inside of three days I shall
telegraph for her. Within five minutes after your departure, I shall
state on the bulletin board that Miss Gladys de Milligan has been
expelled under circumstances that absolutely prove the innocence of
every other pupil in this school.”
All this was done. Untruthful Laura, making her farewells airily, told
her friends that she was merely going home a little ahead of time in
order to have a longer vacation for spring shopping and necessary
dressmaking. She’d see them all again right after Easter, and bring back
lovely presents for all of them. She borrowed Augusta’s best middy scarf
in order, she said, that her mother might select about a dozen like it
for her to give to the other girls. Augusta, of course, never saw either
cheap little Laura or the precious scarf again.
Laura was certainly not a nice child; but circumstances were against
her. She possessed a decidedly foolish, unladylike and not altogether
truthful mother so perhaps Laura’s lack of good qualities was not
entirely her own fault. With a really nice mother, she might have been a
really nice girl; but Mrs. Milligan’s daughter had very little chance.
During the last three days of Laura’s stay, it seemed to Jean that
things were not clearing up as rapidly as Miss Blossom had predicted.
She wondered if, after all, nothing had been done for Marjory. Poor
little Marjory, in spite of Jean’s encouraging words, in spite of Mrs.
Henry’s reassuring smiles and Miss Blossom’s hopeful glances, could see
no way out of her troubles. Hazel still drew her skirts aside when
Marjory passed and snippy little Lillian Thwaite still almost tipped
over backwards in her efforts to turn her very small nose up in
Marjory’s presence (for sticking-up purposes, it was really a very poor
nose). And to Jean’s surprise, there was Laura, apparently perfectly
unconcerned, going on just as she always had. Was nothing _ever_ going
to be done to clear Marjory and Sallie?
Notwithstanding many unusual kindnesses from her Lakeville friends—even
always-hungry Mabel begged her to eat part of her favorite
dessert—puzzled Marjory felt that the sky was dark above her and the
world a terrible place for little girls just her size. And then, quite
suddenly, Laura was whisked away by her mother, and Doctor Rhodes, chalk
in hand and frowning prodigiously, was approaching the fateful bulletin
board.
You can imagine how, five minutes after Laura’s going, the always
curious girls flocked to the bulletin board to see what Doctor Rhodes
had posted thereon. How eagerly they read the astonishing announcement
and how their tongues wagged afterwards. How glad Marjory and Sallie
were to have the mystery cleared away and how relieved the Lakeville
girls felt at having their precious Marjory emerge from the cloud that
had obscured her happiness for so long a time.
“Right after Gladys’s mother came this morning,” said Sallie, “there was
_something_ going on in the office. It sounded very much like a very
angry woman telling Doctor Rhodes just what she thought of him; but of
course I didn’t stay to listen—I _wanted_ to just awfully. But when I
went back afterwards with the message I was waiting to deliver, the lady
was gone and poor Doctor Rhodes was mopping perspiration from his
forehead, although the room was quite cold. I guessed he’d been having a
right trying interview with somebody. He looked perfectly wilted.”
Mabel giggled. “I guess he had one all right if it was Mrs. Milligan. We
used to hear her in Lakeville.”
But Jean watched the smoke of the train that was bearing tawdry little
Gladys Evelyn de Milligan toward Chicago, and out of this tale, and was
sorry.
“Poor foolish Laura,” she breathed, “I’m so sorry you had to be you. You
were smart enough to have made a perfectly lovely girl and I did have
hopes of you.”
“_I_ didn’t,” said Mabel, “and I’m glad I don’t have to be polite to her
any more. It’s hard enough to be polite when you really _want_ to be.
But when you’re all impolite inside—”
“We know what you mean, Mabel,” laughed Henrietta. “And now that I know
the horrible secret you’ve been keeping from me all this time I am
filled with admiration for all four of you. I remember now that you told
me long ago about a horrid child named Laura; but I never dreamed that
she and Gladys were the same person. And you, Mabel, with your ‘impolite
inside’ are a complete surprise. I didn’t think you could keep a
secret.”
“Jean _made_ us,” returned Mabel.
“Well,” assured Henrietta, “I think you were right to give Gladys a
chance. It was noble of you to do it even if it hasn’t turned out as
well as you expected. And isn’t it great to have Sallie and Marjory
cleared! And there’s Hazel apologizing this very minute for being so
nasty to Marjory about those blue beads.”
“She’s _lending_ them to Marjory,” gasped Jean. “She’s fastening them
about Marjory’s neck.”