"SWEETBRIARS ALL"
"Oh, dear me!" complained Nettie Parsons, "I never can do it."
"'In the bright Lexicon of Youth, there is no such word as "fail,"'"
quoted Mercy Curtis, grandiloquently.
"That must be a pretty poor reference book to have in one's library,
then," said Helen, making fun of the old saying which the lame girl had
repeated. "How do we know--perhaps there are other important words left
out--_A bas le_ Lexicon of Youth!"
"Perseverence is the winning game, Nettie," Ruth said to the Southern
girl, cheerfully. "Stick to it."
"And if _then_ you can't make the sum come right, come to Aunt Ruthie and
_ask_. That's what _I_ do," confessed Ann Hicks, the ranch girl.
"Perseverence wins," quoth Helen.
"Oh, it does, does it?" cried Jennie Stone, called by the girls "Heavy,"
in a smothered tone, for her mouth was full of caramels. "Let me tell you
that old 'saw' is a joke. My little kid cousin proved that the other day.
She came to grandfather--who is just as full of maxims and bits of wisdom
as Helen seems to be to-day, and the kid said:
"'Grandpa, that's a joke about "If at first you don't succeed," isn't it?'
"And her grandfather answered, 'Certainly not. "Try, try again." That's
right.'
"'Huh!' said the kid, who is one of these Cynthia-of-the-minute'
youngsters, 'you're wrong, Grandpa. I've been working for an hour blowing
soapbubbles and trying to pin them on a clothes line in the nursery to
dry!' Perseverence didn't cut much of a figure in her case, did it?"
finished Heavy, with a chuckle.
The crowd of girls was in the big "quartette" room in the West Dormitory
of Briarwood Hall. The school had reopened only a week before, but all the
friends were hard at work. All but Ann Hicks and Nettie Parsons hoped to
graduate the coming June.
In the group, besides Ruth and Helen, were their room-mates, Mercy Curtis
and Ann Hicks; Jennie Stone; Mary Cox, the red-haired girl usually called
"The Fox;" and Nettie Parsons, "the sugar king's daughter," as she was
known to the school. She was the one really rich girl at Briarwood--and
one of the simplest in both manner and dress.
Nettie was backward in her studies, as was Ann Hicks. Nettie was a
lovable, sweet-tempered girl, who had several reasons for being very fond
of Ruth Fielding. Indeed, if the truth were told, not a girl in the
quartette that afternoon but had some particular reason for loving Ruth.
Ruth's life at the school had been a very active one; yet she had never
thrust herself forward. Although she had been the originator of the most
popular--now the only sorority in the school, the Sweetbriars, she had
refused to be its president for more than one term. All the older girls
were "Sweetbriars" now.
Mercy Curtis, who had a sweet voice, now commenced to sing the marching
song of the school, which had been adopted by the Sweetbriars and made
over into a special sorority song. Sitting on her bed, with her arms
clasped around her knees, the lame girl weaved back and forth as she sang:
"'At Briarwood Hall we have many a lark--
But one wide river to cross!
The River of Knowledge--its current dark--
Is the one wide river to cross!
Sweetbriars all-l!
One wide River of Knowledge!
Sweetbriars all-l!
One wide river to cross!
"'Sweetbriars come here, one by one--
But one wide river to cross!
There's lots of work, but plenty of fun,
With one wide river to cross!'"
"Altogether!" cried Heavy. "All join in!"
"The dear old chant!" said Helen, with a happy sigh.
Ruth had already taken up the chorus again, and her rich, full-throated
tones filled the room:
"'Sweetbriars all-l!
One wide River of Knowledge!
Sweetbriars all-l!
One wide river to cross!'"
"Once more!" exclaimed the girl from Montana, who could not herself sing a
note in harmony, but liked to hear the others. The chant continued:
"'Sweetbriars joining, two by two--
There's one wide river to cross!
Some so scared they daren't say 'Booh!'
To the one wide river to cross!"
"That was _us_, Ruthie!" broke off Helen, laughing. "Remember how scared
we were when we walked up the old Cedar Walk with The Fox, here, and
didn't know whether we were going to be met with a brass band or a ticket
to the guillotine?"
The Fox, otherwise Mary Cox, suddenly turned red. Ruth hastened to smooth
over her chum's rather tactless speech, for Mary had been a different girl
at that time from what she was now, and the memory of the hazing she had
visited on Ruth and Helen annoyed her.
"And what did meet us?" cried Ruth, dramatically. "Why, a poor, emaciated
creature standing at the steps of this old West Dormitory, complaining
that she would starve before supper if the bell did not sound soon. You
remember, Heavy?"
"And I feel that way now," said Jennie Stone in a hollow tone. "I don't
know what makes me so, but I am continually hungry at least three times a
day--and at regular intervals. I must see a physician about it."
"Aren't you afraid of the effect of eating so much, Jennie?" asked Helen,
gently.
"What's that? Is there a new disease?" asked the fleshy girl, trying to
express fear--which she never could do successfully in any such case.
Jennie had probably never been ill in her life save as the immediate
result of over-indulgence in eating.
"No, my dear," said Ruth Fielding's chum. "But they do tell me that eating
_too_ much may make one _fat_."
"Horrors!" ejaculated Jennie. "I can't believe you. Then that is what is
the matter with me! I thought I looked funny in the mirror. I must be
getting a wee bit plump."
"Plump!"
"Hear her!"
"She's the girl who went up in the balloon and came down 'plump!'"
The shouts that greeted Heavy's seriously put remark did not disturb the
fleshy girl at all. "That is exactly the trouble," she went on, quite
placidly. "And it cost me half a dollar yesterday."
"What's that?" asked somebody, curiously.
"Where?" asked another girl.
"In chapel. Didn't you see me trying to crawl through between the two rows
of seats? And I got stuck!"
"Did you have to pay Foyle the fifty cents to pry you out, Heavy?"
demanded Ann Hicks.
"No. I dropped the half dollar and tried to find it. I looked for it;
that's all I _could_ do. I was too fat to find it."
"Did you look good, Jennie?" asked Ruth, sympathetically.
"Did I look good?" repeated the fleshy girl, with scorn. "I looked as good
as a fat girl crawling around on all fours, ever _does_ look. What do you
think?"
The laugh at Jennie Stone's sally really cleared the room, for the warning
bell for supper sounded almost immediately. Heavy and Nettie, and all who
did not belong in the quartette room, departed. Then Mercy went tap, tap,
tapping down the corridor with her canes--"just like a silly woodpecker!"
as she often said herself; and Ann strode away, trying to hum the marching
song, but ignominiously falling into the doleful strains of the "Cowboy's
Lament" before she reached the head of the stairway.
"I really would like to know what that thing is you've been writing,
Ruth," remarked Helen, when they were alone. "All those sheets of
paper--Goodness! it's no composition. I believe you've been writing your
valedictory this early."
"Don't be silly," laughed Ruth. "I shall never write the valedictory of
this class. Mercy will do that."
"I don't care! Mrs. Tellingham considers you the captain of the graduating
class. So now!" cried loyal Helen.
"That may be; but Mercy is our brilliant girl--you know that."
"Yes--the poor dear! but how could she ever stand up before them all and
give an oration?"
"She _shall_!" cried Ruth, with emphasis. "She shall _not_ be cheated out
of all the glory she wins--or of an atom of that glory. If she is our
first scholar, she must, somehow, have all the honors that go with the
position."
"Oh, Ruthie! how can you overcome her natural dislike of 'making an
exhibition of herself,' as she calls it, and the fact that, really, a girl
as lame as she is, poor creature, could never make a pleasant appearance
upon the platform?"
"I do not know," Ruth said seriously. "Not now. But I shall think it out,
if nobody else _can_. Mercy shall graduate with flying colors from
Briarwood Hall, whether I do myself, or not!"
"Never mind," said Helen, laughing at her chum's emphasis. "At least the
valedictorian will hail from this dear old quartette room."
"Yes," agreed Ruth, looking around the loved chamber with a tender smile.
"What will we do when we see it no longer, Helen?"
"Oh, don't talk about it!" cried Helen, who had forgotten by this time
what she had started to question Ruth about. "Come on! We'll be late for
supper."
When her chum's back was turned, Ruth slipped out of her table drawer the
very packet of papers Helen had spoken about. The sheets had been
typewritten and were now sealed in a manila envelope, which was addressed
and stamped.
She hesitated all day about dropping the packet in the mailbag; but now
she took her courage in both hands and determined to send it to its
destination.