WHAT WAS IN REBECCA'S TRUNK
The two chums did not speak a word to each other until they had
recovered their snowshoes and set out down the rough side of Bliss
Island for the ice. Then Helen sputtered:
"People like _that_! Did you ever see such a person? I never was so
insulted----"
"Pshaw! She was right--in a way," Ruth said coolly. "We had no real
business to pry into her affairs."
"Well!"
"I got you into it. I'm sorry," the girl of the Red Mill said. "I
thought it really was Maggie, or I wouldn't have come over here."
"She's something like that Maggie girl," proclaimed Helen. "_She_ was
nice, I thought."
"Maybe this girl is nice, taken under other circumstances," laughed
Ruth. "I really would like to know what she is over here for."
"No good, I'll be bound," said the pessimistic Helen.
"And another thing," Ruth went on to say, as she and her chum reached
the level of the frozen lake, "did you notice that pick handle?"
"That what?" demanded Helen, in amazement.
"Pickaxe handle--I believe it was," Ruth said thoughtfully. "It was
thrust out of the snow pile she had scraped away from the boulder. And,
moreover, the ground looked as though it had been dug into."
"Why, the ground is as hard as the rock itself," Helen cried. "There are
six or eight inches of frost right now."
"I guess that's so," agreed Ruth. "Perhaps that's why she built such a
big fire."
"What _do_ you mean, Ruth Fielding?" cried her chum.
"I think she wanted to dig there for something," Ruth replied
reflectively. "I wonder what for?"
When they had returned to Dare Hall and had got their things off and
were warm again, they looked out of the window. The campfire on the
island had died out.
"She's gone away, of course," sighed Ruth. "But I would like to know
what she was there for."
"One of the mysteries of life," said Helen, as she made ready for bed.
"Dear me, but I'm tired!"
She was asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. Not so
Ruth. The latter lay awake some time wondering about the odd girl on the
island and her errand there.
Ruth Fielding had another girl's troubles on her mind, however--and a
girl much closer to her. The girl on the island merely teased her
imagination. Rebecca Frayne's difficulties seemed much more important to
Ruth.
Of course, there was no real reason for Ruth to take up cudgels for her
odd classmate. Indeed, she did not feel that she could do that, for she
was quite convinced that Rebecca Frayne was wrong. Nevertheless, she was
very sorry for the girl. The trouble over the tam-o'-shanter had become
the most talked-of incident of the school term. For the several
following days Rebecca was scarcely seen outside her room, save in going
to and from her classes.
She did not again appear in the dining hall. How she arranged about
meals Ruth and her friends could not imagine. Then the housekeeper
admitted to Ruth that she had allowed the lonely girl to get her own
little meals in her room, as she had cooking utensils and an alcohol
lamp.
"It is not usually allowed, I know. But Miss Frayne seems to have come
to college prepared to live in just that way. She is a small eater,
anyway. And--well, anything to avoid friction."
"Of course," Ruth said to Helen and Jennie Stone, "lots of girls live in
furnished rooms and get their own meals--working girls and students. But
it is not a system generally allowed at college, and at Ardmore
especially. We shall hear from the faculty about it before the matter is
done with."
"Well, we're not doing it," scoffed Jennie. "And that Rebecca Frayne is
behaving like a chump."
"But how she does stick to that awful tam!" groaned Helen.
"Stubborn as a mule," agreed Jennie.
"I saw her with another hat on to-day," said Ruth, reflectively.
"That's so! It was the one she wore the day she arrived," Helen said
quickly. "A summer hat. I wonder what she did bring in that trunk,
anyway? She has displayed no such charming array of finery as I
expected."
Ruth did not discuss this point. She was more interested in the state of
Rebecca's mind, though, of course, there was not much time for her to
give to anything but her studies and regular duties now, for as the term
advanced the freshmen found their hours pretty well filled.
Scrub teams for certain indoor sports had been made up, and even Jennie
Stone took up the playing of basketball with vigor. She was really
losing flesh. She kept a card tacked upon her door on which she set down
the fluctuations of her bodily changes daily. When she lost a whole
pound in weight she wrote it down in red ink.
Their activities kept the three friends well occupied, both physically
and mentally. Yet Ruth Fielding could not feel wholly satisfied or
content when she knew that one of her mates was in trouble. She had
taken an interest in Rebecca Frayne at the beginning of the semester;
yet of all the freshmen Rebecca was the one whom she knew the least.
"And that poor girl needs somebody for a friend--I feel it!" Ruth told
herself. "Of course, she is to blame for the situation in which she now
is. But for that very reason she ought to have somebody with whom to
talk it over."
Ruth determined to be that confidant of the girl who seemed to wish no
associate and no confidant. She began to loiter in the corridors between
recitation hours and at odd times. Whenever she knocked on Rebecca's
door there was no reply. Other girls who had tried it quickly gave up
their sympathetic attentions. If the foolish girl wished for no friends,
let her go her own way. That became the attitude of the freshman class.
Of course, the sophomores followed the lead of the seniors and the
juniors, having as little to do with the unfortunate girl as possible.
But the day and hour came at last when Ruth chanced to be right at hand
when Rebecca Frayne came in and unlocked her room door. Her arms were
full of small packages. Ruth knew that she had walked all the way to the
grocery store on the edge of Greenburg, which the college girls often
patronized.
It had been a long, cold walk, and Rebecca's fingers were numb. She
dropped a paper bag--and it contained eggs!
Now, it is quite impossible to hide the fact of a dropped egg. At
another time Ruth might have laughed; but now she soberly retrieved the
paper bag before the broken eggs could do much damage, and stepped into
the room after the nervous Rebecca.
"Oh, thank you!" gasped the girl. "Put--put them down anywhere. Thank
you!"
"My goodness!" said Ruth, laughing, "you can't put broken eggs down
_anywhere_. Don't you see they are runny?"
"Never mind, Miss Fielding----"
"Oh! you've a regular kitchenette here, haven't you?" said Ruth,
emboldened to look behind a curtain. "How cunning. I'll put these eggs
in this clean dish. Mercy, but they are scrambled!"
"Don't trouble, Miss Fielding. You are very kind."
"But scrambled eggs are pretty good, at that," Ruth went on, unheeding
the other girl's nervousness. "If you can only get the broken shells out
of them," and she began coolly to do this with a fork. "I should think
you would not like eating alone, Rebecca."
The other girl stared at her. "How can I help it?" she asked harshly.
"Just by getting a proper tam and stop being stubborn," Ruth told her.
"Miss Fielding!" cried Rebecca, her face flushing. "Do you think I do
this for--for fun?"
"You must. It isn't a disease, is it?" and Ruth laughed aloud,
determined to refuse to take the other's tragic words seriously.
"You--you are unbearable!" gasped Rebecca.
"No, I'm not. I want to be your friend," Ruth declared boldly. "I want
you to have other friends, too. No use flocking by one's self at
college. Why, my dear girl! you are missing all that is best in college
life."
"I'd like to know what _is_ best in college life!" burst out Rebecca
Frayne, sullenly.
"Friendship. Companionship. The rubbing of one mind against another,"
Ruth said promptly.
"Pooh!" returned the startled Rebecca. "I wouldn't want to rub my mind
against some of these girls' minds. All I ever hear them talk about is
dress or amusements."
"I don't think you know many of the other girls well enough to judge the
calibre of their minds," said Ruth, gently.
"And why don't I?" demanded Rebecca, still with a sort of suppressed
fury.
"We all judge more or less by appearances," Ruth admitted slowly. "I
presume _you_, too, were judged that way."
"What do you mean, Miss Fielding?" asked Rebecca, more mildly.
"When you came here to Ardmore you made a first impression. We all do,"
Ruth said.
"Yes," Rebecca admitted, with a slight curl of her lip. She was
naturally a proud-looking girl, and she seemed actually haughty now. "I
was mistaken for _you_, I believe."
Ruth laughed heartily at that.
"I should be a good friend of yours," she said. "It was a great sell on
those sophomores. They had determined to make poor little me suffer for
some small notoriety I had gained at boarding school."
"I never went to boarding school," snapped Rebecca. "I never was
_anywhere_ till I came to college. Just to our local schools. I worked
hard, let me tell you, to pass the examinations to get in here."
"And why don't you let your mind broaden and get the best there is to be
had at Ardmore?" Ruth demanded, quickly. "The girls misunderstand you. I
can see that. We freshmen have got to bow our heads to the will of the
upper classes. It doesn't hurt--much," and she laughed again.
"Do you think I am wearing this old tam because I am stubborn?" demanded
the other girl, again with that fierceness that seemed so strange in one
so young.
"Why--aren't you?"
"No."
"Why do you wear it, then?" asked Ruth, wonderingly.
"_Because I cannot afford to buy another!_"
Rebecca Frayne said this in so tense a voice that Ruth was fairly
staggered. The girl of the Red Mill gazed upon the other's flaming face
for a full minute without making any reply. Then, faintly, she said:
"I--I didn't understand, Rebecca. We none of us do, I guess. You came
here in such style! That heavy trunk and those bags----"
"All out of our attic," said the other, sharply. "Did you think them
filled with frocks and furbelows? See here!"
Ruth had already noticed the packages of papers piled along one wall of
the room. Rebecca pointed to them.
"Out of our attic, too," she said, with a scornful laugh that was really
no laugh at all. "Old papers that have lain there since the Civil War."
"But, Rebecca----"
"Why did I do it?" put in the other, in the same hard voice. "Because I
was a little fool. Because I did not understand.
"I didn't know just what college was like. I never talked with a girl
from college in my life. I thought this was a place where only rich
girls were welcome."
"Oh, Rebecca!" cried Ruth. "That isn't so."
"I see it now," agreed the other girl, shortly. "But we always have had
to make a bluff at our house. Since _I_ can remember, at least.
Grandfather was wealthy; but our generation is as poor as Job's turkey.
"I didn't want to appear poor when I arrived here; so I got out the old
bags and the big trunk, filled them with papers, and brought them along.
A friend lent me that car I arrived in. I--I thought I'd make a splurge
right at first, and then my social standing would not be questioned."
"Oh, Rebecca! How foolish," murmured Ruth.
"Don't say that!" stormed the girl. "I see that I started all wrong. But
I can't help it now," and suddenly she burst into a passion of weeping.