A DANGEROUS PLOT
The girls, their laughter quenched, gazed at each other for a few
seconds with stupefaction. Then Nan sprang to the door, opened it, and
caught sight of a silently scurrying figure that could not by any means
be confounded with Mrs. Cupp's angular form or slow, measured movements.
The other girls, astonished, gazed at Nan open-mouthed as she re-entered
the room with flushed and indignant face and uttered the one
enlightening word:
"Linda."
"It sure was!"
"Of all the nerve!" began Laura slowly.
"Of all the meanness, I should say," amended Rhoda indignantly, as she
turned the key in the door.
Then the funny side struck them, and they sat doubled up with suppressed
laughter.
With increased hilarity the feast went on. The ice cream was brought in
and found to be in a very creditable state of preservation, and the
layer cake and small iced cakes were very soon being gobbled up.
To illustrate that "variety is the spice of life," so she said, Laura
had just followed some ice cream with a sour pickle, when a footstep
neared the door and a stern voice commanded them to open it.
"Linda," whispered Grace to Bess, who was nearest her, while Laura said
in a perfectly audible though subdued voice:
"You can just go about your business, you essence of meanness."
"You needn't think you can work that trick on us twice," added Grace.
"Don't judge our intellects by your own," scoffed Rhoda. "You must think
we were born yesterday."
The girls laughed at the sally, and silence ensued for a moment.
"I guess that has disposed of Linda for the rest of the night," exulted
Laura, and she applied herself again to the now rapidly melting ice
cream.
"Let's finish this cream while the eating's good," laughed Nan, when her
spoon was arrested on its way to her mouth by a voice outside the door.
"Nan Sherwood, I command you to open this door."
In overwhelming consternation the girls rose to their feet, and Nan
unlocked and opened the door.
Quivering with anger and outraged dignity, Mrs. Cupp swept the room with
flashing eyes.
"You will go to your rooms, young ladies, and you will all report at Dr.
Prescott's room to-morrow morning at ten o'clock," she decreed, and,
turning, moved majestically down the corridor, leaving black
consternation behind her.
"Now, we are in for it!" gasped Rhoda, as the sound of footsteps died
away.
Too overwhelmed to say another word, the others slipped away to their
rooms.
The next morning, with many inward quakings, they entered the
principal's room. Dr. Prescott's voice was severe as she said to the
five caught-in-the-act delinquents:
"You are ready to admit, I presume, that you have broken one of the
rules of the school. That I can understand. But that you should have
been guilty of disrespect to one of the officers of the school is quite
another and more serious thing. Have you any explanation to offer?"
After a moment's silence, Nan acted as spokesman.
"We did not intend to be disrespectful to Mrs. Cupp," she declared, and
then went on and told the whole story.
"That puts things in a better light," said Dr. Prescott, when Nan had
finished. "But to make you more careful in future and to remind you that
the rules of Lakeview Hall are made to be observed, not ignored, I will
forbid you all to go outside the grounds for three full days. You can
go now to your recitations."
The girls bowed and withdrew, and for the rest of the morning they were
unusually quiet. At noon they gathered in Laura's room, dropped into the
nearest chairs at hand, and looked at each other lugubriously.
"Three days without poking our noses outside the gates!" mourned Bess.
"How are we ever going to stand it?"
"I don't care much for that," commented Rhoda. "But I hate to give that
Linda Riggs anything to gloat over."
"And she will," declared Grace. "She'll make the very most of it, you
can be sure."
"She will."
"Oh, well, let her then," said Laura, recovering something of her usual
spirits. "Say, girls, did you see the expression on Cupp's face when we
opened the door?"
They burst into a merry laugh at the remembrance, and the laugh lessened
the tension and did them good.
"Oh!" gasped Laura, as she wiped the tears from her eyes, "I shall
remember that look when I'm an old woman."
"I suspect Cupp will remember the occasion, too, for many days to come,"
prophesied Nan.
"I wish there had been a glass opposite the door, so that she could
have seen her face," remarked Bess, going off into another gale of
laughter.
"Come on," said Rhoda, when they had settled down. "Let's go for a walk
on the campus and get some fresh air. Thank goodness, we can do that,
anyway."
"Oh, dear," sighed Nan, as they went downstairs. "No coasting, no
skating for three days. What a fate!"
"No matter," comforted Grace. "The feast was worth it. The memory
lingers."
"It does," agreed Laura. "I can taste that layer cake yet. But come,
girls, I challenge you to a race around the campus. One, two,
three--go!"
"Wait until I make certain my shoe is tight," cried Grace.
"And wait until I get my cap fastened on," added Nan.
"No primping now!" exclaimed Laura. "Everybody ready?"
"What's the prize?" questioned Bess. "I can't run well unless I know
it's worth it."
"You get the hole out of a doughnut," said Nan. "All sugared over, too."
"And a glass of frozen ice-water," added Grace.
"This is all the way around the campus," went on Laura. "No cutting
corners, remember. You must follow the trees and the hedge. One cent
fine if you don't. All ready? One--two--three, go!"
With wild shouts and much laughter the race around the campus was on.
Nan won "by a nose," as Laura rather slangily put it, and the girls,
glowing and breathless, looked like anything else than confessed
law-breakers doing penance.
The sight of their happy faces was too much for Linda, who, with Cora,
was passing them, drawing the _Gay Girl_ and carrying their skates over
their shoulders.
"Some people try mighty hard to show that they're having a good time,"
she remarked to her companion.
"Blessings brighten as they take their flight, as the girl said when she
couldn't leave the campus," grinned Cora maliciously.
"Well," countered Nan, "at least we're not doing penance for sneaking in
the dark and listening at doors."
The flush on Linda's face showed that the shot had reached the mark.
"You think you know a lot, don't you?" she mocked, as she and Cora went
on.
"How I detest that Nan Sherwood," hissed Linda. "I'll get square with
her some day, and that day isn't so far off either. I know just how I'm
going to fix her."
"Why do you keep on being so mysterious?" asked Cora impatiently.
"You're always hinting and getting my curiosity aroused and then
stopping short. Go on and tell me now."
But Linda refused, saying that she wanted to be sure first that her
plans would go through all right.
"When I do spring things," she said, "I'll square up all accounts."
Cora sulked, but had to submit.
Several days later, as Nan and Bess were studying in their room, Bess
wrote the final word in a French translation with a sigh of relief.
"Didn't you say once, Nan," she queried, "that you had somewhere a book
of model French conversations?"
"Yes," answered Nan, looking up from her work. "Do you want it?"
"I'd like it ever so much," Bess answered. "I think it would help me
with these wretched idioms that puzzle me so. Could you get it for me?"
"Surely, Bess," assented Nan, with obliging readiness. "It's down in my
trunk. I'll go right down to the basement to-morrow after we finish our
English recitation at twelve o'clock and get it for you."
"That's a darling, Nan," returned Bess gratefully. "I know it will help
me heaps."
During this conversation their door had been standing open, and Linda
Riggs, who was passing (she made occasion often to pass Nan's door),
heard every word. An exultant look came into her face, and she hurried
off to find Cora. She told her eagerly that at last she knew just how
and when she was going to get even with that much-hated Nan Sherwood.
"What are you going to do?" asked Cora, excited and yet a little fearful
of any scheme that Linda might hatch.
"I'm going to give her the scare of her life," replied Linda. "The idea
came to me the other day when I was in the trunk room in the basement.
The steam started to blow off with such a whistle close to my ears that
it made me almost jump out of my skin. I feel sure that if the steam can
only be held down for a little while and then go off with a rush it will
be ten times louder. If that could be made to happen just as Sherwood
was going past, it would scare her out of a year's growth. She'd think
her last hour had come. The trouble has been that I never knew just when
she'd be there. But I know now. I just heard her say. She's in for the
biggest fright of her life. How does it strike you?"
"It sounds all right," answered Cora slowly. "But how are you going to
do it?"
"Easily," said Linda, with a confident ring in her voice. "After the
janitor has fixed up the fires for the day to-morrow morning he'll not
be in the basement. I'll slip down before Sherwood is due to get there
and tie down the valve. That'll keep the steam confined and make the
shriek that much louder when it's let loose. I'll hide behind the
woodpile, and just when Sherwood is opposite the furnace, I'll cut the
string and--_voila_."
"All very fine," remarked Cora half-heartedly. "But isn't it awfully
dangerous? Have you thought what might happen if you confine the steam?"
"Of course I've thought of that, stupid," replied Linda, nettled at
Cora's lack of enthusiasm. "But the steam won't be held back long enough
to do any harm."
"I'm not so sure of that," said Cora, who felt very uneasy about the
possible results of her friend's malicious scheme.
"Nonsense," retorted Linda. "I'll take all the risk, if there is any.
But there won't be. I've planned it out too carefully to make any
mistake about it. It's too good a chance to get even with Nan Sherwood
to let it go by."