ANOTHER MYSTERY
"Ready, Betty," said Miss Anderson briskly. "You enter at the left and
begin 'I thought I heard voices--' Don't look toward the auditorium.
Remember you are supposed to be in a small room."
Betty managed to command her voice, and the rehearsal went on. Miss
Anderson herself took the part of the maid and, as she had foreseen,
by the time they had finished the hour they were in a normal, happy
frame of mind.
No reference was ever made by any one to Ada's speech, but she never
appeared at another rehearsal. After two weeks' diligent practice, the
players were pronounced perfect and a night was set for the performance
of "The Violet Patchwork."
"Why don't we go to the woods and get some leaves to trim the assembly
hall?" suggested Betty two days before the time for the play. "Mrs.
Eustice's sister is coming to see her, and some other guests, and we want
it to look nice. We might get some nuts, too. Aunt Nancy promised us nut
cake with ice cream if we'll get her enough."
"All right, I like to go nutting," agreed Bobby. "But, for goodness'
sake, if we're going to walk a hundred miles this time, let's have
something to eat with us. Sandwiches and a regular spread. How many have
boxes from home?"
A canvass showed that a round dozen of the girls had been favored that
week, and, at Bobby's suggestion, they donated their goodies to "the
common cause."
"Not all the girls will want to go," said Betty. "Some are such poor
walkers, they'll decline at the first hint of a hike. Every one in the
V.P. will want to go, I think, and that's eleven. Then, counting the
girls with boxes and the others who have asked to come, we'll have
twenty. Twenty of us ought to manage to bring home enough leaves to trim
the hall respectably."
"We might ask for a holiday!" Bobby's face beamed at the thought. "We
haven't had a day off in weeks, and Mrs. Eustice said a long time ago she
thought we'd earned one. Will you do the asking, Betty?"
Betty was accustomed to "doing the asking," and she said she would once
more if Norma Guerin would go with her. Wherever possible, Betty drew
Norma into every school activity, and she persistently refused to allow
her friend to talk as though the Christmas holidays would end their days
at Shadyside. Alice worried less than Norma, but both girls grieved at
the thought of the sacrifice those at home were making for them and felt
that they could not accept it much longer without vigorous protest.
Betty and Bobby, on the other hand, were determined to see to it that
the sisters spent their holidays in Washington, and while Bobby
cherished wild plans of filling a trunk with new dresses and hats and
forcing it in some manner upon her chums, Betty concentrated her
attention on the subject of cash. She intended to consult her uncle, in
person if possible, and if that proved impossible, by letter, and Bob as
to the feasibility of persuading Norma and Alice to borrow a sum
sufficient to see them through to graduation day at Shadyside. Betty was
sure her uncle and Bob, in both of whom she had infinite faith, could
manage this difficult task satisfactorily, though the Guerin pride was a
formidable obstacle.
Acting immediately on the decision to ask for a holiday, Betty and Norma
went down to the office and preferred their request, which was cordially
granted after an explanation of its purpose.
"All day to-morrow off!" shouted Betty, bursting in upon the six girls
assembled to hear the result.
"We may go after breakfast and needn't come back till four o'clock when
Miss Anderson has called a dress rehearsal," chimed in Norma.
Libbie and Louise were dispatched to notify the other girls and to
give strict instructions to those who had boxes not to eat any more of
the contents.
"Elsie Taylor had already eaten six eclairs when I requisitioned her box
for the picnic," said Constance Howard. "It's lucky we're going tomorrow,
or there wouldn't be much left to eat."
Betty and Bobby each had a box from Mrs. Littell, who sent packages of
sensible goodies regularly to her girls in turn.
"I hope the sandwiches will keep fresh enough," worried Betty.
But she might have saved her worry.
Just as she and Bobby were going to bed that night Norma and Alice came
in, wrapped in their kimonos, each carrying a large box under her arm.
"What do you suppose?" asked Norma. "Good old Aunt Nancy heard we were
going after nuts for her cake and leaves for the hall, and she's made us
dozens of sandwiches. She said she did it because Mrs. Eustice reserved
one of the best seats for her at the play. Anyway, we'll be glad to have
them, shan't we? And, oh yes, Aunt Nancy says she'll make us a cake as
big as 'a black walnut tree' and two kinds of ice cream!"
"And she brought the sandwiches up to Norma and Alice because she
was determined they should have something for the picnic," thought
Betty after the girls had gone. "Talk about tact! Aunt Nancy has the
real thing."
The girls were all up early the next morning, and soon after breakfast
they were on their way to the woods. Many of those who were not of the
nutting party went to Edentown, some took canoes and went paddling,
others "puttered" around the school grounds, enjoying the beautiful
autumn weather and the luxury of a holiday.
Ada Nansen and her friends had elected to go to Edentown, and passed the
nutting party on the way. Betty took one glance into the bus and then
looked at Bobby. That young person promptly giggled.
"Did you see what I saw?" she asked.
"Poor Ada!" said Betty. "She does have troubles of her own!"
For of all the teachers, Miss Prettyman alone had been available as
chaperone, and to go to town under Miss Prettyman's eagle eye was
anything but an exciting experience. She was usually bent on "improving"
the minds of her charges, and she improved them with serene disregard of
the victims' tastes and interests. Betty and Bobby had seen her sitting
bolt upright in the bus, reading a thin volume of essays while Ada
scowled at the happy crowd tramping in the road.
The woods reached, they separated, some to gather branches of leaves and
others intent on filling their sacks with nuts. The boxes of lunch were
neatly piled under a tree, and sweaters were left with them, for it was
comfortably warm even in the shadiest spots.
"I don't believe we will have many more days like this," remarked Frances
Martin, her nearsighted eyes peering into a hollow tree stump. "Girls,
what have I found--a squirrel?"
"Plain owl," laughed Betty. "Isn't he cunning?"
They crowded around to admire the funny little creature, and then,
admonished by Bobby, whom Constance declared would make a good drill
sergeant, set busily to work again. Nuts were not plentiful, but they
filled half a sack, and then, a large pile of flaming branches having
been gathered, they decided to drag their spoils back to the tree and to
have lunch.
"Girls, girls, girls!" shrieked Libbie, who was in the lead, "our lunch
is gone--every crumb of it!"
Sure enough, the sweaters were all tossed about in confusion and the
boxes had disappeared.
"Who took it?" demanded Bobby wrathfully. "You needn't tell me that
lunch walked off!"
High and clear and shrill, a familiar whistle sounded back of them.
"That's Bob!" Betty's face brightened. "Listen!"
She gave an answering whistle, and Bob's sounded again.
There was a scrambling among the bushes, and a group of cadets burst
through. Bob and the Tucker twins were first, and after them came Gilbert
Lane and Timothy Derby and Winifred Marion Brown.
"Hello, anything the matter?" was Bob's greeting. "You look rather glum."
"So would you," Betty informed him, "if you were starving after a
morning's work and your lunch was stolen."
"Gee, that is tough!" exclaimed Bob sympathetically. "Who stole it?"
"We don't know," volunteered Bobby. "But all those boxes couldn't take
wings and fly away."
"You go back and get the fellows," Bob commanded Tommy Tucker. "We were
having a potato roast down by the lake, and while the potatoes were
baking some of us came up for more wood," he explained to the girls. "We
thought we heard voices, and so I whistled."
Tommy Tucker was flying down to the lake before half of this explanation
was given.
"Have you a holiday, too?" Betty asked. "We're out to get decorations for
the play."
"It's the colonel's birthday," explained Bob, "and the old boy gave us
the day off. Here come the fellows."
Half a dozen more cadets joined them, all boys the girls had met at the
games. They were loud in their expressions of sympathy for the
disappointed picnickers and promptly offered their potatoes as
refreshments when they should be done.
"Oh, we're going to get that lunch back," announced Bob Henderson
confidently. "Look here!"
He pointed to some footprints in a bit of muddy ground.
"Cadet shoes!" cried Tommy Tucker. "Jimminy Crickets, I'll bet it's that
Marshall Morgan and his crowd!"
"But this is a girl's shoe," protested Betty, pointing to another print.
"See the narrow toe?"
"Ada Nansen or Ruth Royal!" guessed Bobby quickly. "They're the only ones
who won't wear a sensible shoe."