BEARDING THE LIONS
Ruth had shown a very cheerful face before Rebecca Frayne, but when she
was once out of the room the girl of the Red Mill did not show such a
superabundance of cheerfulness.
She knew well enough that Rebecca had become so unpopular that public
opinion could not be changed regarding her in a moment.
Besides, there were the two upper classes to be considered. Their order
regarding the freshmen's head-covering had been flagrantly disobeyed,
and would have to be disobeyed for some time to come. A girl cannot
crochet a tam-o'-shanter in a minute.
Having undertaken to straighten out Rebecca Frayne's troubles, however,
Ruth did not publicly shrink from the task. She was one who made up her
mind quickly, and having made it up, set to work immediately to carry
the matter through.
Merry Dexter, the first senior she had met upon coming to Ardmore, was
kindly disposed toward her, and Ruth knew that Miss Dexter was an
influential member of her class. Therefore, Ruth took her trouble--and
Rebecca's--directly to Miss Dexter.
Yet, she did not feel that she had a right to explain, even to this one
senior, all that Rebecca Frayne had confided to her. She realized that
the girl, with her false standards of respectability and social
standing, would never be able to hold up her head at college if her real
financial situation were known to the girls in general. Ruth was bound,
however, to take Miss Dexter somewhat into her confidence to obtain a
hearing. She put the matter before the senior as nicely as possible,
saying in conclusion:
"And she will knit herself a tam of the proper color just as soon as
possible. No girl, you know, Miss Dexter, likes to admit that she is
poor. It is dreadfully embarrassing. So I hope that this matter will be
adjusted without her situation being discussed."
"Goodness! _I_ can't change things," the senior declared. "Not unless
that girl agrees to do as she is told--like the rest of you freshies."
"Then my opinion of your class, Miss Dexter," Ruth said firmly, "must be
entirely wrong. I did not believe that they ordered us to wear baby blue
tams just out of an arbitrary desire to make us obey. Had I believed
_that_ I would not have bought a new tam myself!"
"You wouldn't?"
"No, Miss Dexter. Nor would a great many of us freshmen. We believed the
order had a deeper significance--and it _had_. It helped our class get
together. We are combined now, we are a social body. And I believe that
if I took this matter up with Rebecca's class, and explained just her
situation to them (which, of course, I do not want to do), the freshmen
as a whole would back me in a revolt against the upper classes."
"You're pretty sure of that, Ruth Fielding, are you?" demanded the
senior.
"Yes, I am. We'd all refuse to wear the new tams. You seniors and
juniors would have a nice time sending us all to Coventry, wouldn't you?
If you didn't want to eat with us, you'd all go hungry for a long time
before the freshmen would do as Rebecca foolishly did."
Miss Dexter laughed at that. And then she hugged Ruth.
"I believe you are a dear girl, with a lot of good sense in your head,"
she said. "But you must come before our executive committee and talk to
them."
"Oh, dear! Beard the lions in their den?" cried Ruth.
"Yes, my dear. I cannot be your spokesman."
Ruth found this a harder task than she had bargained for; but she went
that same evening to a hastily called meeting of the senior committee.
Perhaps Miss Dexter had done more for her than she agreed, however, for
Ruth found these older girls very kind and she seemingly made them
easily understand Rebecca's situation without being obliged to say in
just so many words that the girl was actually poverty-stricken.
And it was probable, too, that Ruth Fielding helped herself in this
incident as much as she did her classmate. The members of the older
classes thereafter gave the girl of the Red Mill considerably more
attention than she had previously received. Ruth began to feel surprised
that she had so many warm friends and pleasant acquaintances in the
college, even among the sophomores of Edith Phelps' stamp. Edith Phelps
found her tart jokes about the "canned-drama authoress" falling rather
flat, so she dropped the matter.
Older girls stopped on the walks to talk to Ruth. They sat beside her in
chapel and at other assemblies, and seemed to like to talk with her.
Although Ruth did not hold an office in her own class organization, yet
she bade fair to become soon the most popular freshman at Ardmore.
Ruth was perfectly unconscious of this fact, for she had not a spark of
vanity in her make-up. Her mind was so filled with other and more
important things that her social conquests impressed her but little. She
did, however, think a good bit about poor Rebecca Frayne's situation.
She warned her personal friends among the freshmen, especially those at
Dare Hall, to say nothing to Rebecca about the unfortunate affair.
Rebecca came into the dining-room again. Ruth knew that she had actually
begun to crochet a baby blue tam-o'-shanter. But it was a question in
Ruth's mind if the odd girl would be able to "keep up appearances" on
the little money she had left and that which her brother could send her
from time to time. It was quite tragic, after all. Rebecca was sure of
good and sufficient food as long as she could pay her board; but the
girl undoubtedly needed other things which she could not purchase.
Naturally, youth cannot give its entire attention to even so tragic a
matter as this. Ruth's gay friends acted as counterweights in her mind
to Rebecca's troubles.
The girls were out on the lake very frequently as the cold weather
continued; but Ruth never saw again the strange girl whom she and Helen
had interviewed at night on Bliss Island.
Hearing from Aunt Alvirah as she did with more or less frequency, the
girl of the Red Mill was assured that Maggie seemed content and was
proving a great help to the crippled old housekeeper. Maggie seemed
quite settled in her situation.
"Just because that queer girl looked like Maggie doesn't prove that
Maggie knows her," Ruth told herself. "Still--it's odd."
Stormy weather kept the college girls indoors a good deal; and the
general sitting-room on Ruth's corridor became the most social spot in
the whole college.
The girls whose dormitory rooms were there, irrespective of class, all
shared in the furnishing of the sitting-room. Second-hand furniture is
always to be had of dealers near an institution like Ardmore. Besides,
the girls all owned little things they could spare for the general
comfort, like Rebecca Frayne's alcohol lamp.
Helen had a tea set; somebody else furnished trays. In fact, all the
"comforts of home" were supplied to that sitting-room; and the girls
were considered very fortunate by their mates in other parts of the
hall, and, indeed, in the other three dormitory buildings.
But during the holiday recess something happened that bade fair to
deprive Ruth and her friends of their special perquisite. Dr. McCurdy's
wife's sister came to Ardmore. The McCurdys did not keep house,
preferring to board. They could find no room for Mrs. Jaynes, until it
was remembered that there was an unassigned dormitory room at Dare Hall.
Many of the girls had gone home over the brief holidays; but our three
friends from Briarwood had remained at Ardmore.
So Ruth and Helen and Jennie Stone chanced to be among the girls present
when the housekeeper of Dare Hall came into the sitting-room and, to
quote Jennie, informed them that they must "vamoose the ranch."
"That is what Ann Hicks would call it," Jennie said, defending her
language when taken to task for it. "We've just got to get out--and it's
a mean shame."
Dr. McCurdy was one of the important members of the faculty. Of course,
the girls on that corridor had no real right to the extra room. All they
could do was to voice their disappointment--and they did that, one may
be sure, with vociferation.
"And just when we had come to be so comfortably fixed here," groaned
one, when the housekeeper had departed. "I know I shall dis-_like_ that
Mrs. Jaynes extremely."
"We won't speak to her!" cried Helen, in a somewhat vixenish tone.
"Maybe she won't care if we don't," laughed Ruth.
But it was no laughing matter, as they all felt. They made a gloomy
party in the pretty sitting-room that last evening of its occupancy as a
community resort.
"There's Clara Mayberry in her rocker again on that squeaky board,"
Rebecca Frayne remarked. "I hope she rocks on that board every evening
over this woman's head who has turned us out."
"Let's all hope so," murmured Helen.
Jennie Stone suddenly sat upright in the rocker she was occupying, but
continued to glare at the ceiling. A board in the floor of the room
above had frequently annoyed them before. Clara Mayberry sometimes
forgot and placed her rocker on that particular spot.
"If--if she had to listen to that long," gasped Jennie suddenly, "she
would go crazy. She's just that kind of nervous female. I saw her at
chapel this morning."
"But even Clara couldn't stand the squeak of that board long," Ruth
observed, smiling.
Without another word Jennie left the room. She came back later, so full
of mystery, as Helen declared, that she seemed on the verge of bursting.
However, Jennie refused to explain herself in any particular; but the
board in Clara Mayberry's room did not squeak again that evening.