Produced by eagkw, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
WITCH WINNIE'S MYSTERY
[Illustration]
WITCH WINNIE'S MYSTERY
OR
THE OLD OAK CABINET
_THE STORY OF A KING'S DAUGHTER_
BY
ELIZABETH W. CHAMPNEY
AUTHOR OF "WITCH WINNIE," "VASSAR GIRLS ABROAD," ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY C. D. GIBSON AND
J. WELLS CHAMPNEY.
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1891,
BY
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY.
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION, 7
I. THE FIRST ESCAPADE OF THE SEASON, 15
II. THE CABINET, 25
III. THE ROBBERY, 41
IV. TROUBLE IN THE AMEN CORNER, 61
V. L. MUDGE, DETECTIVE, 76
VI. HALLOWEEN TRICKS, 96
VII. A STATE OF "DREADFULNESS," 111
VIII. IN THE MESHES OF A GOLDEN NET, 138
IX. "POLO," 161
X. THE CATACOMB PARTY 183
XI. A FALSE SCENT, 210
XII. THE INTER-SCHOLASTIC GAMES, 229
XIII. POLO IS SHADOWED, 265
XIV. THE CLOUDS PART, 304
XV. THE OLD CABINET TELLS ITS STORY, 330
XVI. THE MYSTERY DISCLOSED, 354
INTRODUCTION.
For those who have not read the first volume of this series, "Witch
Winnie, the Story of a King's Daughter."
We four girls,
Adelaide Armstrong,
Milly Roseveldt,
Emma Jane Anton,
Nellie Smith,
had been chums at boarding school.
(Let it here be explained that although my name is Nellie, I am never
called anything but Tib by my friends.)
We occupied a little suite of apartments in the tower, consisting of a
small study parlor from which opened two double bedrooms and one single
one. Our family was called the Amen Corner, because our initials,
arranged as an acrostic, spelled the word Amen, and because we were a
set of little Pharisees, prigs, and "digs," not particularly admired by
the rest of the school, but exceedingly virtuous and preternaturally
perfect in our own estimation.
This was our status at the beginning of our first school year
together, and the change that came over us, owing to the introduction
into our circle of Witch Winnie, the greatest scape-grace in the most
mischief-making set of the school, the "Queen of the Hornets," has
already been told. A quieting, earnest influence acted upon Winnie, and
a natural, merry-hearted love of fun reacted on us, and we were all the
better for the companionship.
The greatest practical result outside the change in our own characters
was the formation, by the uniting of the "Amen Corner" and the
"Hornets," of a Ten of King's Daughters, who founded the Home of the
Elder Brother, for little children. This institution was adopted by our
parents, who formed themselves into a board of managers, but left much
of the working of the enterprise in our hands.[1] The Home prospered
during the first year of its existence in a truly wonderful manner. It
was undenominational and unendowed. No rich church or wealthy man stood
behind it. It was entirely dependent on the efforts of a few young
girls, and on the voluntary subscriptions of benevolent people. But it
grew day by day. Little ripples of influence widened out from our circle
to others. During the vacation our ten separated, and at each of their
homes they formed other tens, who worked for the same object. Every one
who visited the Home was interested in its plan of work, which was to
help the poor without pauperizing them; to aid struggling women whose
husbands had died, or were in hospitals or prisons, and who could have
no homes of their own, by providing them with a substitute for the baby
farming, so extensively carried on in the tenement districts, by
offering them, on the same low terms, a sweet and wholesome shelter
for their little ones. Some wondered why we charged these poor women
anything; why the _half_ charity was not made a free gift. But wiser
philanthropists saw the superior kindness of this demand. The women whom
we wished to aid were not beggars, but that worthy, struggling class
who, overburdened, but still desperately striving, must sink in the
conflict unless helped, but who still wished to do all in their power
for their children, and brought the small sum asked for their board
with a proud and happy self-respect.
[1] This Home is a truthful picture of one really founded by a
band of little girls--the Messiah Home, at 4 Rutherford Place,
Stuyvesant Square, New York, which is aided in its good work by
different circles of King's Daughters.
One of our own members, Emma Jane Anton, on graduating at Madame's,
became matron of the Home, assisted by dear Miss Prillwitz, formerly our
teacher of botany, from whose heart this beautiful thought had
blossomed.
The Home was just across the park from the school building and we
frequently visited it; but though we were all deeply interested in this
sweet charity, it did not interfere with our studies or with a great
deal of girlish, innocent fun. Since Winnie had become my room-mate we
had lost much of the prestige which was formerly the boast of the Amen
Corner, and after Emma Jane left the little single room, Madame, feeling
that our influence had done much for Winnie, sent another of the
"Hornets" into our midst.
We had accepted and adopted Winnie with all our hearts, for her many
lovable qualities, and above all for her genuine good fellowship and
affectionate nature, but Cynthia Vaughn was a very different character.
There was nothing but enjoyable fun in any of Winnie's tricks; Cynthia's
were mean and malicious. We never liked her, and she openly showed her
scorn of Winnie and of me, while she fawned in a hypocritical manner,
striving to ingratiate herself with aristocratic Adelaide and with
gentle Milly, who was the wealthiest girl at Madame's.
We were no longer the best behaved set in school, and an acrostic formed
from our initials could not now be made to spell anything; but the name
"Amen Corner" clung to the little apartment, and Madame still looked
upon us with favor. She knew that Adelaide and Milly, Winnie and I, were
all, beneath our mischief, true-hearted, earnest girls, and she
charitably hoped for great improvement in Cynthia.
There was one person who did not believe in us--Miss Noakes, our
corridor teacher. She believed that Winnie was filled with all iniquity
and that Adelaide was far too attractive to be allowed the confidence
which Madame reposed in her. It was Miss Noakes's great grievance
that she could never discover the least approach to a flirtation in
Adelaide's conduct. I believe that she fairly gloated with anticipated
triumph when Madame engaged a handsome young artist to take charge of
our art department, and that from this time she watched and peeped and
listened with an industry which would have done credit to a better
cause. She seemed to argue that as no lover of the beautiful could fail
to appreciate Adelaide's beauty, therefore our artist must admire
Adelaide, and in this deduction she was not far from the truth, but she
ought not to have taken it for granted that Adelaide must be equally
pleased with her admirer. How her espionage tracked us through several
innocent tricks and capers, and was finally foiled by our beloved
Winnie; how the great mystery of the robbery for a time brought doubt
and suspicion between four dear friends who would, and did, go through
fire and water for one another; and how, in spite of doubt and jealousy
and trouble, our love and devotion for one another: burned brightly
and steadily on to the end of the school year, and into the life
beyond--this little book will tell.
That the events which I am about to relate may be better understood, I
subjoin a plan of the "Amen Corner."
[Illustration: PLAN OF THE =AMEN CORNER=]
WITCH WINNIE'S MYSTERY.
CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST ESCAPADE OF THE SEASON.
[Illustration]
"Girls!" Winnie exclaimed excitedly as we entered our study parlor after
recitation, "I am wild with curiosity to know what they are doing in the
hospital. All the morning, while I have been trying to study, there has
been the greatest thumping and bumping going on in there. I wonder
whether they are chaining down an insane patient, or if the ghostly
nurses are having a war dance."
"Why didn't you look and see?" Cynthia Vaughn asked, pointing to the
transom over a locked door, which formerly opened from our parlor into
the hospital ward.
Madame had made abundant provision for sickness in the original
arrangement of the school building. A large sky-lighted room had been
set apart as an infirmary, and a little suite of rooms in the great
tower adjoining as the physician's quarters. But it was rare indeed
that any one was ill at Madame's, and when a pupil was taken sick, her
parents usually took her home at once. So the doctor, having nothing to
do but to hear the recitations in physiology, preferred not to reside in
the school building, and the pretty suite of rooms, consisting of a
parlor and three bedrooms, was assigned to us, and the hospital proper
was used as a trunk room. Winnie always maintained that ghosts of
medical students experimented there in the night watches on imaginary
cases of vivisection, that corpses were embalmed, and shrieks and howls
were to be heard, in the wee small hours, while phantom lights fumed
blue on the other side of the transom, and sickly odors of ether and
other drugs penetrated through the keyhole. We all laughed at Winnie's
phantasms, but there were none of us so brave as to care to visit that
room after nightfall. The trunks looked too much like coffins, and there
were dresses of Madame's sewed up in bags made of sheets, and suspended
from the roof, which had the uncanny look of corpses of people who had
hanged themselves.
It was broad daylight now, and we were not at all nervous, and Cynthia
remarked scornfully, "Winnie has told us so many of her bug-a-boo
stories that she has come to actually believe in them herself. She dare
not for her life look through that transom to see what occasions the
noise in the hospital."
"You dare me to do it?" Winnie asked, confronting Cynthia with flashing
eyes.
"Don't, Winnie," I pled. "We have no right to peep."
Winnie hesitated.
"I told you so," Cynthia said provokingly. "She dares not look. It is
only a lumber room. The noise was probably made by some cat chasing a
rat around."
"It would take a whole army of cats to make the noises I have heard,"
Winnie replied hotly, at the same time rolling Adelaide's great
Saratoga trunk in front of the door.
"There it goes again!" and as a loud hammering re-echoed through the
adjoining room, she sprang upon the trunk. The transom was still too
high for her to reach. "Quick, girls, something else," she exclaimed,
and Milly dragged the "Commissary Department" from its retirement under
my bed.
The "commissary" was a small, old-fashioned trunk, which had belonged
to my great-grandmother. It was covered with cow-skin, the hair only
partially worn off, and studded with brass-headed nails which formed the
initials of my ancestors. It was lined with newspapers bearing the date
1790, and was altogether a very quaint and curious relic. Its chief
interest to us, however, lay in the fact that it had come to us from
my home filled with all the good things that a farm can produce and a
mistakenly soft-hearted mother send. There were mince pies and pickles,
a great wedge of cheese, a box of honey, pounds of maple-sugar, tiny
sausages, a great fruitcake, jars of pickled peaches, ginger snaps,
walnuts and chestnuts, pop-corn and molasses candy, and what Milly
called the _interstixes_ were filled in with delicious doughnuts. It was
a treasure house of richness upon which we revelled in the night after
the gas was turned out and we all met in our nightgowns, and formed a
semicircle sitting on the floor around the register, while Winnie told
the most deliciously frightful ghost and robber stories.
Then, it was that the "commissary" yielded up its contraband stores and
we ate, and shivered, partly with cold and partly with delightful terror
inspired by the rehearsal of legends for which Winnie ransacked, during
the day, the pages of the detective Vidocq and Poe's prose tales.
Then if a mouse did but squeak in the deserted hospital ward, or the
shuffle of Miss Noakes's slippers was heard in the corridor outside, we
all scuttled incontinently to our beds, and Winnie snored loudly, while
Milly buried her head beneath the blankets. Miss Noakes occupied a large
room opposite the hospital. She was a disagreeable, prowling teacher and
we had nicknamed her _Snooks_.
The "commissary" being now carefully poised upon the curved top of
Adelaide's trunk, Winnie mounted upon it, and found that it was exactly
what was needed, as it brought her face just on a level with the
transom.
"O girls!" she exclaimed, "the trunks are all gone, and they are making
the room over into a studio. And that handsome man that sat at Madame's
table yesterday at dinner is in there hanging pictures. I wonder if he
is an artist and is going to teach us. My! he is looking this way,"
and Winnie crouched suddenly. The movement was a careless one, and
the commissary slid down the sloping cover of the trunk upon which it
rested, striking the door with its end like a battering-ram, and with
such force that the rusted lock yielded, and the commissary, with Winnie
seated upon it, swept forward, like a toboggan, far into the center of
the hospital.
It was strange that Winnie was not hurt, but she was not; and before the
astonished artist could quite comprehend what had happened, she had
picked herself up, scampered back into our room, and we had closed the
door behind her, and were fastening it to the best of our ability by
tying the knob to Adelaide's trunk by means of a piece of clothes-line
which had formerly served to cord the commissary.
At first we laughed long and merrily over the adventure, but by degrees
its serious aspects were appreciated.
In the first place, Milly suggested dolorously that the commissary had
fallen into the hands of the enemy, while Cynthia Vaughn drew attention
to the fact of the broken lock.
"However you girls will explain that to Madame is more than I know," she
remarked maliciously.
"_You_ girls!" Winnie repeated indignantly, "as if you were not as much
concerned in it as any of us."
"Indeed," Cynthia exclaimed scornfully, "if I remember rightly, it was
Milly who brought the commissary from its retirement, Tib who balanced
it so judiciously, and Winnie who dawned so unceremoniously on that
strange man in the other room. I had absolutely nothing to do with the
affair."
"You were the instigator of it all," I retorted hotly. "If you had not
dared Winnie to do it she would never have tried to look in."
"That is like you, Tib," Cynthia replied icily, "to get into a scrape
and then lay the blame on some one else."
"I take all the blame," Winnie exclaimed loftily. "If inquisition is
ever made into this affair, I and I alone am responsible," and then she
uttered a little shriek and scampered into her own bedroom, for some
one was knocking at the door, which we had just attempted to fasten.
"Who is there?" I asked, with as much boldness as I could muster; "and
what do you want?"
"I am Carrington Waite, the new Professor of Art, and I would like to
return property which has been most unexpectedly introduced into my
studio, unless it is possible that the articles to which I refer were
intended as a donation."
We all laughed at this sally, and made haste to unfasten the door,
whereupon Professor Waite handed in the commissary. He had a pleasant
face, and there was a merry twinkle in his eye as he said: "I tried to
bundle everything in, but the trunk collided with my box of colors, and
you may find rose madder in your jam, while the pickle jar actually
seemed to explode, and showered pickles all over the studio. I have no
doubt I shall find them along the cornice when I hang the pictures on
that side of the room. The doughnuts, too, flew in every direction. Some
rolled under the cabinets, and a mince pie applied itself like a plaster
to the back of my neck. A bottle of tomato catsup was emptied on one of
my canvases, and made a fine impressionistic study of a sunset. I am
afraid I stepped on the cheese, but I believe everything else is all
right."
He looked about him with interest, and asked, "Where is the heroine who
performed this astonishing acrobatic feat? I trust she was not hurt. It
must have been a thrilling experience. Is it a customary form of
exercise with you young ladies?"
We did not deign to reply to these questions, but I opened the
commissary and offered the artist some of our choicest dainties. He
accepted our largess, and retired with polite invitations for us to be
"neighborly" and "to call again."
"Not in just that way," I replied, and I entreated him, if possible, to
repair the broken lock. He examined it carefully.
"I am afraid," he said, "that it will require a locksmith to do it
thoroughly, but I can make it look all right, and you can screw a little
bolt on your side which will fasten the door securely."
We thanked him and he was about to close the door, when Adelaide,
who was the only one of our circle who had not had a part in the
escapade, entered the room hastily from the corridor. "O girls," she
exclaimed--but stopped suddenly as she caught sight of the open door
and the young artist. At first her face showed only blank surprise,
then, as she told herself that this must be a joke of Winnie's, who
was fond of masquerading in costume, she remarked with dignity.
"Really, this is quite too childish; where did you ever get that absurd
costume? You look too ridiculous for anything----"
Cynthia Vaughn shrieked with laughter.
The artist bowed, but colored to the roots of his hair and closed the
door, while Milly threw her arms around Adelaide, laughing hysterically,
Winnie appeared from behind her door also laughing, and I vainly
attempted to explain matters.
"What a mortifying situation," Adelaide remarked, when she finally
understood the case. "I must apologize for my rudeness, and I am sure I
would rather put my hand in boiling water than speak to that man."
"I am sure I only wish that I may never see him again," said Winnie.
"Nothing in this world could induce me to join the painting class, and
if there is one thing that I am profoundly grateful for, it is that I
have no talent for art."