A PLOT
"IF there's anything I _loathe_ it's a sneak and a telltale!" The Little
Colonel's voice rang out so clearly that the girls in the cloak-room
stopped to listen.
It was Monday morning, and the pupils were assembling in the chapel for
opening exercises. Lloyd stood near the door, the centre of an indignant
little group, which cast scornful glances at another little group,
whispering together by one of the windows.
"It's the most contemptible thing that evah happened in the seminary,"
Lloyd continued. "It's a disgrace to have such a girl in school."
Katie, who had been anxiously watching the cloak-room door for the last
five minutes, for the appearance of Allison and Kitty, suddenly
exclaimed, "There they are now, hanging up their wraps. Let's hurry and
tell them before school begins!"
The next instant the two late comers found themselves in a corner,
hemmed in by Betty, Katie, and Lloyd, all so indignant that they could
scarcely make themselves understood.
"Girls," began Lloyd, in a voice quavering with anger, "you nevah heard
anything so outrageous! Satahday aftahnoon, all that time we were making
fudge up in our room, somebody was hiding in the closet next to ours,
listening to every word we said!"
"How do you know?" gasped Kitty, remembering with dismay several
speeches she had made, which would sound decidedly foolish if repeated.
"Lollie Briggs said so. We'd hardly got into the room this mawning when
some of the girls began to laugh and repeat every word we had said."
"It's all over the school about our Shadow Club," chimed in Betty, "and
think how hard we tried to keep it secret! And the very girls who would
have been glad to join, if they had been invited in the first place, are
making fun of it. They keep pointing to the ground behind us, and
pretend to be amazed at what they see there. Of course they are
referring to our shadows, for they make all sorts of spiteful little
side remarks about them."
"But there's something worse than that," added Katie, almost tearfully.
"I'll never hear the last of the speech I made about Charlie Downs and
the apple-paring initials. Oh, you just wait! They've got hold of every
foolish little thing we teased each other about that afternoon; Guy
Ferris' valentine and brass button, and the little silver arrow Malcolm
Maclntyre gave Lloyd years ago, and all we said about the way we'd like
to be proposed to, you know--when we were talking about the 'Fortunes of
Daisy Dale.' They're telling it all over the school, and making us
appear too ridiculous for any use."
"Who could be mean enough to hide and listen?" exclaimed Allison,
indignantly. "The sneak!"
"Say snake, while you're about it," hissed Kitty. "They're spelled with
the same letters."
"We haven't any idea," answered Betty, "or why the girls who are doing
the most teasing and talking should take such a spiteful pleasure in it.
They've seemed so friendly always, until this morning."
"Come, girls," called Mrs. Clelling, in passing. "It's time for the
silence bell."
Hurrying out of the cloak-room, they took their places in chapel, and
obediently opened their song-books at the signal, but it is doubtful if
any member of the Shadow Club could have told afterward what was sung
that morning. The letter in Ida's chatelaine-bag, which Lloyd had
smuggled to her soon after breakfast, on her return from the
post-office, absorbed all her thoughts. The other five girls were busy
with the one question: "Who could have been such a sneak as to listen
and tell?"
There were six bad records in every recitation that the club made that
morning. Notes flew back and forth, and anxious eyes watched the clock,
eager for recess to come. At the first signal, Lloyd flew to Ida, but
before she could outline the plan of action she and Allison had decided
upon in the history class, Ida said, hurriedly, "Oh, Princess, that
letter has upset me so I don't know whether I'm walking on earth or air.
I'll tell you to-morrow--something awfully important, but I've got to
plan something now, so I must go off by myself and put on my
thinking-cap. Oh, I'm all in a flutter."
Wondering what news the letter could have contained to bring such a
becoming flush to Ida's face, and such a glow of happiness in the
beautiful violet eyes, Lloyd turned away disappointed. But she forgot
both the wonder and the disappointment a few minutes later, as she and
Allison walked up and down in front of the seminary arm in arm. Kitty
and Katie were just behind them. Betty had not yet come out, having
stopped at the sight of Janie Clung's tears to explain a problem in
arithmetic.
Lollie Briggs, Flynn Willis, and Caddie Bailey stood on the front steps,
and each girl who came out of the hall was called into their midst, and
told something with many significant glances toward the four pacing back
and forth past them in a fine unconcern.
Presently Caddie called out in a voice intended for them to hear, "I
wonder if anybody can guess this conundrum. Nell, can you?"
The question was addressed to one of the older girls who came out of the
front door just then, without a wrap around her. It was a frosty
morning, and every one else had either a jacket or cloak.
"Wait till I run back and get my golf cape," she cried. "I didn't know
it was so cold."
"Now look out," whispered Allison to Lloyd. "They're going to say
something to her to try to set her against us. They're stopping
everybody who comes out. That makes eight already they've set to
whispering and looking at us, all standing there in that crowd on the
steps."
Nell came out again, hugging her golf cape around her, and stood on the
top step. "Well, what's your conundrum?" she asked, good-naturedly.
Caddie slightly raised her voice. "What's the difference between a
person who wouldn't stoop to 'anything so common as a kissing-game,' and
a person who would get up a goody-goody club, pretending it was for the
benefit of the poor, and yet all the time be using it simply as an
excuse to meet and read silly novels on the sly, and talk about the
boys, and roast the other girls behind their backs, whom they considered
'too common' to associate with them?"
In a flash Lloyd realized what had offended Caddie, and what was the
cause of her covert sneers. Whoever it was who had played the sneak had
taken pains to report every word she had said about the girls who had
played Pillow at Carter Brown's party. She looked around to see who had
been the most active in denouncing the club. There they were on the
steps, Flynn Willis, Caddie Bailey, Lollie Briggs, all but Mittie
Dupong. The same girls she had called common, because they had allowed
the boys to take a liberty which she thought cheapened them. She knew
now why they were so spiteful in their remarks. Before Nell could gather
her wits together for a reply, Lloyd sprang forward, her eyes flashing.
"Why don't you come straight out and say what you mean, Cad Bailey?"
she cried. "You're only telling part of the truth. Now I'll tell it all.
I did say behind your backs that I thought it was common to play
kissing-games, and now I say it to yoah faces. I can't help thinking it.
I've been brought up that way, and if you've been brought up
differently, then you've a right to think yoah way. If I've hurt yoah
feelings, I beg yoah pahdon, but I have a right to express my opinion in
my own room to my best friends. We were _not_ 'roasting' anybody. We
only made a criticism that you must expect to have made on you, whenevah
you do things that are common. And what are you going to say about the
person who hid and listened all aftahnoon? _Somebody_ was sneak enough
not only to hide in a closet and betray secrets that no girl of honah
would have listened to, but she misrepresented the club in repeating
them."
Lloyd's temper was rapidly getting the best of her, but in the middle of
her anger she seemed to hear her father saying, in the playful way in
which he used to warn her long ago, "Look out, little daughter, the
tiger is getting loose." She stopped short.
"Who did that?" cried Nell. "I didn't suppose there was such a
dishonourable girl in the school."
"Neither did I," answered Flynn Willis, quickly. "I never stopped to ask
how the report started. I was so mad at being talked about that I did
just what Cad Bailey told me to do, repeated everything I was told, just
to tease the club and get even."
All eyes were turned inquiringly to Caddie Bailey.
"I don't know how it started," she cried. "Honestly I don't. Lollie
Briggs told me. She and several girls were talking about it this morning
before breakfast, out in the hall. They were all furious, and they told
me lots of things to say that would tease Lloyd and the rest of them
nearly to death. I was mad, too, but I don't know who told in the first
place."
"It was you, Lollie Briggs, who told me that somebody had hid in the
Clark girls' closet," cried Lloyd. "You know you did, when I demanded to
know who had started all this talk. Who was it?"
"I promised I wouldn't tell," said Lollie, sullenly, "and I won't. You
needn't ask, for no power on earth could drag it out of me. So there!"
"It's like the story of Chicken Little," laughed Nell. "'Who told you,
Goosey-Lucy? Ducky-Lucky. Who told you, Ducky-Lucky? Henny-Penny. Who
told you, Henny-Penny?' Seems to me I'd make it my business to find out
who this particularly contemptible Chicken Little happens to be, before
I'd report any more of her tales."
Nell swept back into the hall, and, as the four girls started to resume
their walk, Betty knocked on the cloak-room window, beckoning violently
for them to come inside. They ran in pell-mell and shut the door behind
them.
"I've found out!" cried Betty, in a tragic whisper. "It was Mittie
Dupong! Cassie found her class-badge on their closet floor, and just now
brought it down to her. She denied it was hers, but there's no mistaking
that queer little stick-pin and chain fastened to it that she uses as a
guard. She's the only one in school who has one like that--an owl's head
in a wishbone, you know. Besides, there were her initials, M. D., on the
under side of the badge. Cassie turned it over and showed them to her.
She took it, then, but denied having been in the closet, and was so
confused and contradicted herself so many times that anybody could see
that she felt caught and was telling a story. She even vowed that she
hadn't been near the west wing for a week. Then she ran out and banged
the door, but Janie Clung said, 'Oh, what a story! I met her coming out
of there Saturday night, on the way down to supper.'"
"What do you think we ought to do about it?" asked Katie. That was a
question no one could answer. In the first flush of their indignation,
it seemed to them that nothing they could do to Mittie would be
sufficient punishment for such an act of meanness. They felt that she
was a disgrace to the school, and decided that they would be conferring
a benefit on the seminary if they could succeed in getting rid of her.
Even Betty failed for the time to remember the "Road of the Loving
Heart" she was trying to leave behind her in every one's memory; and, if
the little talisman on her finger pricked her tender conscience once or
twice, she silenced it with the reflection that it was her duty to help
punish the doer of such a contemptible deed. The name of the club
finally suggested the means.
"She told all the secrets of the Shadow Club, and spoiled it," said
Katie. "Now we just ought to shadow _her_. Haunt her, you know, like the
Ku Klux Klan, or the White Caps, so she'll leave school and be afraid to
listen again as long as she lives."
"Yes," agreed Kitty. "We'll _hoodoo_ her. That is the way."
Such a plan never would have been thought of in a Northern school. Even
in this little Kentucky seminary it is doubtful if it could have been
carried out had not previous events paved the way. There was scarcely a
pupil in the school whose earliest impressions had not been tinged in
some degree by the superstitions of some old coloured nurse or family
servant. Even Lloyd had not escaped them entirely, in spite of all her
mother's watchful care. Mom Beck knew better than to talk of such things
openly before her, but she had hinted of them to the other servants in
her presence, till Lloyd had a vague uneasiness when she dreamed of
muddy water, or spilled the salt, or saw a bird flying against a window.
From babyhood such happenings had been associated in her mind with Mom
Beck's portents of ill-luck.
There was not a coloured person in the neighbourhood who could have
explained why so many graves in the negro cemetery had bottles or
fruit-jars placed upon them, inside of which were carefully sealed the
whitest of chicken feathers. Undoubtedly they were the relic of some old
African fetish, and a reverence for them had been handed down from
grizzled grandsire to little pickaninny since the beginning of the
slave-trade. In the same way had come all those other superstitions at
which white people laughed, but which influenced many of them also to
some extent. For many a man who scoffed most, felt more comfortable when
he saw the new moon in an open sky than when he caught first sight of it
through the trees; and more than one, having once started on a journey,
would not have turned back, no matter what important thing was left
behind, preferring to do without at any cost or inconvenience rather
than risk the ill-luck the turning back would bring.
Lloyd knew more than one housekeeper in the neighbourhood who, for the
same reason, would not allow the ashes emptied after sundown, or an
umbrella to be raised in the house; and who would turn pale if a mirror
was broken or a picture fell from the wall or a dog howled in the night.
Probably not a pupil in the school would have admitted that she believed
in ghosts, yet few would have been brave enough to venture into the
cellar at night after Mary Phillips' encounter with the spirit of the
"veiled lady" on Hallowe'en. That had been a frequent topic of
conversation since that night, and had done much to prepare the way for
the plot the club concocted.
So Kitty's proposition was received with enthusiasm. The performance
began next day when she slipped up behind Mittie in the cloak-room, and
solemnly touched her three times in quick succession on the left ear
with something she held in her hand. It felt soft and furry, and Mittie,
who had a horror of caterpillars, gave a little shriek as she put up her
handkerchief to brush it away.
Kitty had already disappeared into the chapel, but Katie was waiting,
ready to begin her part of the performance.
"Did you see that?" she said to Janie Clung, in an awed tone, just loud
enough for Mittie to hear, and yet low enough to seem confidential.
"I know people who would go stark, raving crazy if that was done to
them. What for? I thought everybody knew what for. My old nurse used to
say that to be touched three times on the ear by the left hind foot of a
rabbit that had been killed in a graveyard in the dark of the moon by a
cross-eyed person, was the worst luck anybody could have." She lowered
her voice a trifle. "_It's a hoodoo-mark! You're marked for the haunts
to follow you!_"
"The what?" asked another girl who stood near.
"The haunts--ghosts--you know. Jim Briddle calls them 'ha'nts.' Nobody
could be more cross-eyed than he is, and he's the one who gave that
rabbit's foot to Ranald Walton, and Ranald gave it to Kitty. I should
think that Mittie Dupong would feel mighty creepy if she knew what's
ahead of her."
Mittie heard and did feel creepy, although she shrugged her shoulders
and tried hard to appear unconcerned. The fact that the club seemed to
place so much reliance in the hoodoo made a strong impression on Janie
Clung, and gave it a weight it would not have possessed otherwise when
the occurrence was repeated to the other girls. Before the week was over
it was whispered around the school that the charm was really working.