A DEEP, DARK PLOT
"Heavy is actually losing flesh," Helen declared to Ruth. "I can see
it."
"You mean you _can't_ see it," laughed her chum. "That is, you can't see
so much of it as there used to be. If she keeps on with the rowing
machine work in the gym and the basket ball practise and dancing, she
will soon be the thinnest girl who ever came to Ardmore."
"Oh, never!" cried Helen. "I don't believe I should like Heavy so much
if she wasn't a _little_ fat."
People who had not seen Jennie Stone for some time observed the change
in her appearance more particularly than did her two close friends. This
was proved when Mr. Cameron and Tom arrived.
For, as the girls did not go home for just a few days, Helen's father
and her twin unexpectedly appeared at college on Christmas Eve, and
their company delighted the chums immensely.
On Friday evenings the girls could have company, and on all Saturday
afternoons, even during the college term. Also a girl could have a young
man call on her Sunday evening, provided he took her to service at
chapel.
The three Briarwood friends had had no such company heretofore. They
made the most of Mr. Cameron and Tom, therefore, during Christmas week.
There was splendid sleighing, and the skating on the lake was at its
very best. Ruth insisted upon including Rebecca Frayne in some of their
parties, and Rebecca proved to be good fun.
Tom stared at Jennie Stone, round-eyed, when first he saw her.
"What's the matter with you, Tom Cameron?" the fleshy girl asked, rather
tartly. "Didn't you ever see a good-looking girl before?"
"But say, Jennie!" he cried, "are you going into a decline?"
"I decline to answer," she responded. But she dimpled when she said it,
and evidently considered Tom's rather blunt remark a compliment.
The Christmas holidays were over all too soon, it seemed to the girls.
Yet they took up the class work again with vigor.
Their acquaintanceship was broadening daily, both in the student body
and among the instructors. Most of the strangeness of this new college
world had worn off. Ruth and Helen and Jennie were full-fledged
"Ardmores" now, quite as devoted to the college as they had been to dear
old Briarwood.
After New Year's there was a raw and rainy spell that spoiled many of
the outdoor sports. Practice in the gymnasium increased, and Helen said
that Jennie Stone was bound to work herself down to a veritable shadow
if the bad weather continued long.
Ruth was in Rebecca's room one dingy, rainy afternoon, having skipped
gymnasium work of all kind for the day. The proprietor of the room had
finished her baby blue cap and had worn it the first time that week.
"I feel that they are not all staring at me now," she confessed to Ruth.
Ruth was at the piles of old papers which Rebecca had hidden under a
half-worn portierre she had brought from home.
"Do you know," the girl of the Red Mill said reflectively, "these old
things are awfully interesting, Becky?"
"What old things?"
"These papers. I've opened one bundle. They were all printed in Richmond
during the Civil War. Why, paper must have been awfully scarce then.
Some of these are actually printed on wrapping paper--you can scarcely
read the print."
"Ought to look at those Charleston papers," said Rebecca, carelessly.
"There are full files of those, too, I believe. Why, some of them are
printed on wall paper."
"No!"
"Yes they are. Ridiculous, wasn't it?"
Ruth sat silent for a while. Finally she asked:
"Are you sure, Becky, that you have quite complete files here of this
Richmond paper? For all the war time, I mean?"
"Yes. And of the South Carolina paper, too. Father collected them during
and immediately following the war. He was down there for years, you
see."
"I see," Ruth said quietly, and for a long time said nothing more.
But that evening she wrote several letters which she did not show Helen,
and took them herself to the mailbag in the lower hall.
Before this, Mrs. Jaynes, Dr. McCurdy's sister-in-law, was settled in
the room which had formerly been used by the girls as their own
particular sitting-room. She was not an attractive woman at all; so it
was not hard for her youthful associates on that corridor of Dare Hall
to declare war upon Mrs. Jaynes.
Indeed, without having been introduced to a single girl there, Mrs.
Jaynes eyed them all as though she suspected they belonged to a tribe of
Bushmen.
Naturally, during hours of relaxation, and occasionally at other times,
the girls joked and laughed and raced through the halls and sang and
otherwise acted as a crowd of young people usually act.
Mrs. Jaynes was plainly of that sort that believes that all youthfulness
and ebullition of spirits should be suppressed. Luckily, she met the
girls but seldom--only when she was going to and from her room. On
stormy days she remained shut up in her apartment most of the time, and
Mrs. Ebbetts sent a maid up with her tray at meal time. She never ate in
the Dare Hall dining-room.
Meantime, Jennie Stone had several mysterious sessions with certain of
the girls who felt quite as she did regarding the usurpation of Dr.
McCurdy's sister-in-law of the spare room. Had Ruth not been so busy in
other directions she would have realized that a plot of some kind was in
process of formation, for Helen was in it, as well.
Jennie Stone had made a friend of Clara Mayberry on the floor above. In
fact, a number of the girls on the lower corridor affected by the
presence of Mrs. Jaynes, were in and out of Clara's room all day long.
None of these girls remained long at a time--not more than half an hour;
but another visitor always appeared before the first left, right through
the day, from breakfast call till "lights out." And after retiring hour
there began to be seen figures stealing through the corridors and on the
stairway between the two floors. That is, there would have been seen
such ghostly marauders had there been anybody to watch.
Mrs. Jaynes crossly complained to Mrs. Ebbetts that she was kept awake
all night long--and all day, for that matter! But as she never put her
head out of her room after the lights were lowered in the corridors, she
did not discover the soft-footed spectres of the night.
"But," she complained to Mrs. Ebbetts, "it is the noisiest room I ever
was in. Such a squeaking you never heard! And all the time, day and
night."
"I do not understand that at all," said the puzzled housekeeper.
"I'd like to know how the girl who had that room before I took it, stood
that awful squeaking noise," said the visitor.
"Why, Mrs. Jaynes," said the housekeeper, "no girl slept there. It was a
sitting-room."
"Even so, I cannot understand how anybody could endure the noise. If I
believed in such things I should declare the room was haunted."
"Indeed, Madam!" gasped the housekeeper. "I do not understand it."
"Well, I cannot endure it. I shall tell my sister that I cannot remain
here at Ardmore unless she finds me other lodgings. That awful _squeak,
squeak, squeak_ continues day and night. It is unbearable."
In the end, Dr. McCurdy found lodgings for his sister-in-law in
Greenburg. The girls of Ruth's corridor were delighted, and that night
held a regular orgy in the recovered sitting-room.
"Thank goodness!" sighed Jennie Stone, "no more up and down all night
for us, either. We may sleep in peace, as well as occupy the room in
peace."
"What _do_ you mean, Heavy?" demanded Ruth.
"Oh, Ruthie! That's one time we put one over on you, dear," said the
fleshy girl sweetly. "You were not asked to join in the conspiracy. We
feared your known sympathetic nature would revolt."
"But explain!"
"Why, Clara let us use her rocking chair," Jennie said demurely. "It's a
very nice chair. We all rocked in it, one after another, half-hour
watches being assigned----"
"Not at night?" cried the horror-stricken Ruth.
"Oh, yes. All day and all night. Every little minute that rocker was
going upon the squeaky board. It's a wonder the board is not worn out,"
chuckled the wicked Jennie.
"Well, I never!" proclaimed Ruth, aghast. "What won't you think of next,
Jennie Stone?"
"I don't know. I know I'm awfully smart," sighed Jennie. "I did so much
of the rocking myself, however, that I don't much care if I never see a
rocking-chair again."