The next day was Saturday, and directly after a very early
twelve-o'clock luncheon the girls were all going to the Park to skate.
Miss Marr had a cold, and was not able to accompany them, as she usually
did on these outings. She sent, in her stead, two of the under
teachers,--Miss Stephens and Miss Thompson.
"And if we _can't_ have Miss Marr, Stevey and Tommy are not bad," Kate
Van der Berg declared, rather irreverently, as she ran up to her room to
make herself ready. Several girls were following in her wake; amongst
them was Dorothea, who suddenly retorted to Kate's words,--
"Perhaps _some_ of us had quite as lief have Stevey and Tommy as Miss
Marr."
It was the first time that Dorothea had responded even indirectly to any
remarks of Kate's since their stormy interview; and though there was a
sharp flavor in what was said, Kate held herself in, and did not reply
to it. But one of the younger girls called out in protest,--
"Oh, how can you say that! There's nobody like Miss Marr. I never skate
half so well with any one else as I do with her."
"Yes, but you are contented to skate _her way_, I suppose," flung back
Dorothea, with a little disagreeable laugh.
"Course I am, because she knows just how; and so her way's better than
mine," was the innocent answer to this.
"And I like _my_ way best sometimes, and take it," returned Dorothea,
with another disagreeable laugh.
Kate understood perfectly well that these flings were aimed at her, and
not at little Lily Chester; but she was determined to take no notice of
them.
Dorothea, however, in spite of this sudden outburst of rancor, seemed to
be in excellent spirits, and laughed and talked with one and another of
the girls with even more than her usual volubility. Arrived at the Park,
however, her spirits seemed to flag. Kate, who had caught her quick,
searching glance across the pond, thought at once: "She is disappointed
in not finding somebody here that she expected. I wonder if it is
Raymond Armitage?" But just at that moment a shrill halloo reached Kate,
and wheeling about she saw Peter Van Loon, with her brother Schuyler and
little Johnny, skating down the ice towards her, and Dorothea and her
affairs vanished from her mind. It was some time later that she was
curiously recalled to her, by Peter Van Loon suddenly exclaiming,
"Hello, there's Armitage now, going off with the daffodil girl!"
"The daffodil girl!" What did he mean? Kate followed the direction of
Peter's eyes, and saw Raymond Armitage with Dorothea, who had a lot of
daffodils stuck in her belt,--a fresh offering, evidently, from her
escort.
"But why do you call her the 'daffodil girl?'" asked Kate, wonderingly.
"Oh, you know she had such a lot of them when I first saw her--and with
the yellow gown--she looked all daffodils, and I didn't know her name
then."
"And so you called her 'the daffodil girl;'" and Kate laughed: this was
so like Peter.
"Yes; so I called her the 'daffodil girl,'" assented Peter, smiling a
little at Kate's laugh.
The pond by this time had become pretty well covered with skaters, and
it was not easy to keep any one in view; but Dorothea was tall, and for
a while the nodding plumes in her hat were distinctly visible to Kate
and her companion, as they held on their way; but presently the nodding
plumes turned in another direction, and they lost sight of them, and out
of sight was out of mind again. In the mean time Hope, with Schuyler Van
der Berg and little Johnny, was coursing about in the merriest manner,
little Johnny proudly showing Hope how to use a hocky stick on the ice.
In this absorbing occupation the two approached the spot where some of
the attendants and chaperons of the different parties were made
comfortable; and as they did so, Hope, to her surprise, saw Dorothea
Dering leaving the ice in company with Raymond Armitage.
What did this mean? Dorothea was always the last one to leave the ice.
But there was Miss Stephens--Miss Stephens would know what it meant; and
skating up to her, Hope asked the question, and was told, in Miss
Stephens's placid, easy way, that Miss Dering had got tired of skating,
and Miss Bessie Armitage and her brother, who were just leaving, had
taken charge of her to Miss Marr's.
Dorothea tired of skating at this early hour? Why, they had but just
begun! And where was Bessie? Miss Stephens had said, "Miss Bessie
Armitage and her brother;" and she, Hope, had only seen the brother,
Raymond Armitage. Perhaps, however, Bessie had gone on ahead;
but--but--and a whole host of suppositions came crowding into Hope's
mind. If it had been any other of the girls, none of these suppositions
would have arisen. If Myra Donaldson or Anna Fleming had confessed to
being tired, and had given out that she was going home under the escort
of Bessie Armitage and her brother, who would have thought but that it
was the most natural and proper thing in the world, and who--_who_ would
have thought of questioning the statement as it stood? But Dorothea,
with her little plots and plans, had clearly shown herself another
person entirely, and it was little wonder that Hope, under the
circumstances, should suspect further plotting and planning.
"What is it,--what's up?" asked ten-year-old Johnny, as his companion
suddenly forgot all interest in the hockey stick, and stood balancing
herself on her skates, with a puzzled frown drawing her brows together.
For answer, Hope turned about with a "I don't know, Johnny, but we'll go
and find Kate. I want to ask her something."
"All right;" and Johnny struck out to the left, where he saw his
sister's Scotch skating-cap, with its glittering aigrette, shining in
the sun.
"Tired of skating? Gone home?" cried Kate, when Hope told her story. "I
don't believe it! Schuyler!"
"Oh, I wouldn't!" expostulated Hope.
"Yes, I'm going to ask Schuyler--I want to know--Schuyler, did Raymond
Armitage come out in the same car with you?"
"Part way, but he left the car at Madison Square; he had ordered some
theatre seats, and he stopped at the theatre to see if they were all
right."
"Oh, and then he came on here to meet Bessie?"
"Bessie?"
"Yes; funny, though, I haven't seen her. Have _you_ seen her?"
"No."
"And yet Hope says that Miss Stephens told her that Dorothea had got
tired of skating, and gone home under the escort of Bessie Armitage and
her brother."
"Miss Stephens?"
"Yes, Miss Stephens, one of the under-teachers, who is blind and deaf
about some things,--a good, dear stupid, who thinks everybody is a lamb,
and Raymond Armitage the Prince of Lambs, I suppose, and like the father
of his country, and cannot tell a lie, and--"
"But perhaps Bessie was just ahead, and Miss Stephens _did_ see her,"
put in Hope.
"And didn't take her for granted," scoffed Kate. Then, as she caught a
look that her brother and Peter exchanged, she cried,--
"What is it? Peter!" bringing one little skate-clad foot down on the ice
with an emphasis that sent out a shower of sparkles, "tell me instantly
what you know. Don't you see, you two boys, that it's for the credit of
the school,--of dear Miss Marr, of Dorothea (silly goose that she is),
and all the rest of us,--that this kind of thing shall be nipped in the
bud? Don't you see that you _ought_ to tell what you know, that some of
us can stop the foolishness, and save Dorothea from being sent home?"
"Come now, you don't mean that;" and Peter stopped short in that odd way
of his.
"Yes, I do mean that Miss Marr would send Dorothea straight home if she
heard of her going off for a lark with Raymond Armitage. She says at the
start that her school is neither an infant school nor a reform school,
and if she finds that girls of fifteen and sixteen don't know how to
behave like ladies in the ordinary ways of good manners, they are not
the kind of girls she wants in her house, and so she sends them out of
it. There isn't any nagging or any little punishments. She advises us
and talks to us in a nice friendly way at the beginning, and sometimes
later; but she lets a girl alone enough to find out just what she is,
and _then_, when she finds out that the girl has faults and habits that
may injure the other girls, she won't have her in her school; and so now
I want you to tell us--Hope and me--what you know about this going off
with Raymond Armitage, so that--"
"You may go and tell Miss Marr, and have her pack the girl off home."
"Schuyler!"
"Oh, well, I didn't mean exactly that, of course; but what _do_ you
propose to do?"
"Stop the foolishness, whatever it is, that may be going on."
"Well, after what you told me the other day of your undertaking in that
line with this particular party, I shouldn't think you'd attempt
anything further with her."
"But somebody must do it. I don't like Dorothea, I didn't from the
first; but I want her to have another chance, and I do so hate to have
things come to the pass of her being expelled; it would be perfectly
horrid for all of us. But we're only wasting time if you won't help us
by telling--"
"But what is it you want to know?"
"What _you_ know; in the first place, if Ray Armitage said that he was
coming here to meet his sister, and if he _expected_ her to be here?"
"Well, no; he didn't say anything about his sister."
"Did he say anything about Dorothea?"
"Yes."
"That he was coming here to meet _her_?"
"Yes."
"And that he was going to take _her_ with him this afternoon to the
matinee?"
"Yes."
"Then, oh, Schuyler, you _must_ come with me down to the Madison Square
Theatre and head them off!"
"Head them off! They've got there by this time."
"No; they were going out on the other side, where they had just left
Miss Stephens, because _that_ was the way they would take to go straight
to Miss Marr's. Don't you see? Ray Armitage's cunning! Now, if _we_ go
out on this side, and take the elevated, we shall get ahead of them,
and--"
"Well, I just sha'n't do anything of the kind! I'd like to see myself
playing private policeman like that! If the girl is such a blooming
idiot as this, she won't pay any attention to you! No, I guess I don't
try any such missionary work, to be laughed at by all the fellows in
town."
"Laughed at!" A glance upward as she said this, and Kate caught the grin
on Peter Van Loon's face, and burst forth: "Oh, that's all your
manliness is worth! You're afraid,--afraid some other selfish fellows
will laugh at you for doing your duty."
"'Tisn't _my duty_!"
"No, it isn't, Kate; he's right."
Kate turned about in astonishment, for it was Hope who had spoken, and
Hope who went on speaking,--
"And _you_--_you_ ought not to go, Kate; Dorothea would--would--"
"Be madder than ever. But what _can_ be done?"
"_I'll_ go."
"_You?_"
"Yes, with Mrs. Sibley. I've just caught sight of her; see, she is over
there talking to Johnny. If I tell her how it is--what I want to do,
she'll understand, she'll be glad to help; and Dorothea will listen to
her, when she wouldn't to you or to me, I dare say."
"Well, that's a much more sensible plan than yours, Kate," commented
Schuyler Van der Berg, as Hope darted off; "but all the same it's my
opinion that Miss Dorothea Dering isn't going to be kept from that
matinee performance, even if they catch her in time."
"Which they won't," spoke up Peter, as he looked at his watch.