AT MRS. SADOC SMITH'S
Mrs Tellingham, wise in the ways of girls, had foreseen the excitement and
disturbance in the placid current of Briarwood life, and made plans
following the fire to counteract the evil influences of just this
disturbance. The girls who hoped to graduate from the school in the coming
June must have more quiet--must have time to study and to think.
The younger girls, if they fell behind in their work, could make it up in
the coming terms. Not so Ruth Fielding and her friends, so the wise school
principal had distributed them, after the destruction of the West
Dormitory, in such manner that they would be free from the hurly-burly of
the general school life.
A few, like Mercy Curtis (who could not easily walk back and forth from
any outside lodging), Mrs. Tellingham kept in her own apartment. But the
greater number of the graduating class was distributed among neighbors
who--in most cases--were not averse to accepting good pay for rooms which
could only be let to summer boarders and were, at this time of year, never
occupied.
The Briarwood Hall preceptress allowed her girls to go only where she
could trust the land-ladies to have some oversight over their lodgers. And
the girls themselves were bound in honor to obey the rules of the school,
whether on the Briarwood premises or not.
Visiting among the outside scholars was forbidden, and the girls studying
for graduation had their hours more to themselves than they would have had
in the school.
Special chums were able to keep together in most instances. Ruth, Helen
and Ann Hicks went to live at Mrs. Sadoc Smith's; and there was room in
the huge front room on the second floor of her rambling old house, for
Mercy, too, had it been wise for the lame girl to lodge so far from the
school.
Mrs. Smith got the girls up in season in the morning to reach the dining
hall at Briarwood by breakfast-time; and she saw to it, likewise, that
their light went out at ten o'clock in the evening. These were her
instructions from Mrs. Tellingham, and Mrs. Sadoc Smith was rather a grim
person, who did her duty and obeyed the law.
There being an extra couch, Ruth persuaded her friends to agree to the
coming of a fourth girl into the lodging. And this fourth girl, oddly
enough, was not one of the graduating class, or even one of the girls
whom they had chummed with before.
It was the new girl, Amy Gregg! Amy Gregg, whom nobody seemed to want, and
who seemed to be the loneliest figure and the most sullen girl who had
ever come to Briarwood Hall!
"Of course, you'd pick up some sore-eyed kitten," complained Ann Hicks.
"That child has a fully-developed grouch against the whole world, I verily
believe. What do you want her for, Ruthie?"
"I don't want her," said Ruth promptly.
"Well! of all the girls!" gasped Helen. "Then _why_ ask Mrs. Tellingham to
let her come here?"
"Because she ought to be with somebody who will look out for her," Ruth
said.
She did not tell her mates about it, but Ruth had heard some whispers
regarding the origin of the fire that had burned down the West Dormitory,
and she was afraid Amy would be suspected.
The older girl had reason to know that Mrs. Tellingham had questioned Amy
regarding the candle she had obtained from Miss Scrimp's store. The girl
had emphatically denied having left the candle burning on leaving her room
to go to supper on the fatal evening.
The girls had begun, after a time, to ask questions about the origin of
the fire. They knew it had started on the side of the corridor where Amy
Gregg had roomed. They might soon suspect the truth.
"If they do, good-bye to all little Gregg's peace of mind!" Ruth thought,
for she knew just how cruel girls can be, and Amy did not readily make
friends.
Although Ruth and her room-mates tried to make the flaxen-haired girl feel
at home at Mrs. Sadoc Smith's, Amy remained sullen, and seemed afraid of
the older girls. She was particularly unpopular, too, because she was the
only girl who had refused to write home to tell of the fire and ask for a
contribution to the dormitory fund.
Amy Gregg seemed to be afraid to talk of the fire and refused to give even
a dollar toward the rebuilding of the dormitory. "It isn't _my_ fault that
the old thing burned down. I lost all my clothes and books," she
announced. "I think the school ought to pay _me_ some money, instead."
After saying this before her room-mates at Mrs. Smith's, all but Ruth
dropped her.
"Sullen little thing," said Helen, with disgust.
"Not worth bothering with," rejoined Ann.
The only person to whom Amy Gregg seemed to take a fancy was Mrs. Smith's
scapegrace grandson, Henry. Henry was the wildest boy there was anywhere
about Briarwood Hall. He was always getting into trouble, and his
grandmother was forever chastising him in one way or another.
Nobody in the neighborhood knew him as "Henry." He was called "that Smith
boy" by the grown folk; by his mates he was known as "Curly."
Ruth felt that Curly never would have developed into such a mischievous
and wayward youth had it not been for his grandmother.
When a little boy Henry had come to live with Mrs. Sadoc Smith. Mrs. Smith
did not like boys and she kept Henry in kilts until he was of an age when
most lads are looking forward to long trousers. She made him wear
Fauntleroy suits and kept his hair in curls down his back--molasses
colored curls that disgusted the boy mightily. Finally he hired another
boy for ten cents and a glass agate to cut the curls off close to his
head, and he stole a pair of long trousers, a world too wide for him, from
a neighbor's line. He then set out on his travels, going in an empty
freight car from the Lumberton railroad yards.
But he was caught and brought back, literally "by the scruff of his neck;"
and his grandmother was never ending in her talk about the escapade. The
curls remained short, however. If she refused to give Curly twenty cents
occasionally to have his hair cut, he would stick burrs or molasses taffy
in the hair so that it had to be kept short.
There seemed an affinity between this scapegrace lad and Amy Gregg. Not
that she possessed any abundance of spirit; but she would listen to Curly
romance about his adventures by the hour, and he could safely confide all
his secrets to Amy Gregg. Wild horses would not have drawn a word from her
as to his intentions, or what mischief he had already done.
Curly was a tall, thin boy of fifteen, wiry and strong, and with a face as
smooth and pink-and-white as a girl's. That he was so girlish looking was
a sore subject with the boy, and whenever any unwise boy called him
"Girly" instead of "Curly" it started a fight, there and then.
Henry was forbidden by his grandmother to bother the girls from Briarwood
Hall in any way, and to make sure that he played no tricks upon them, when
Ruth and her mates came to the house to lodge, Mrs. Smith housed Curly in
a little, steep-roofed room over the summer kitchen.
It was a cold and uncomfortable place, he told Amy Gregg. Ruth heard him
tell her so, but judged that it would not be wise to beg Mrs. Smith for
other quarters for her grandson. She was not a woman to whom one could
easily give advice--especially one of Ruth's age and inexperience.
Mrs. Smith was a very grim looking woman with a false front of little,
corkscrew curls, the color of which did not at all match the iron-gray of
her hair. That the curls were made of Mrs. Smith's own hair, cropped from
her head many years before, there could be no doubt. It Nature had erred
in turning her actual hair to iron-gray in these, her later years, that
was Nature's fault, not Mrs. Smith's!
She grimly ignored the parti-colored hair as she did the natural
exuberance of her grandson's spirit. If Nature had given him an
unquenchable amount of mirth and jollity, that, too, was Nature's fault.
Still, Mrs. Sadoc Smith proposed to quell that mirth and suppress the joy
of Curly's nature if possible.
The only question was: In the process of making Curly over to fit her
ideas of what a boy should be, was not Mrs. Smith running a grave chance
of ruining the boy entirely?
And what boy, living in a house with four girls, could keep from trying to
play tricks upon them? If the shed-chamber had been a mile away over the
roofs of the Smith house, Curly would have been tempted to creep over the
shingles to one of the windows of the big front room, and----
Nine o'clock at night. All four of the girls quartered with Mrs. Smith
were busy with their books--even flaxen-haired Amy Gregg. The rustle of
turning leaves and a sigh of weariness now and then was all that had
broken the silence for half an hour.
Outside, the wind moaned in the trees. It was cold and the sky was
overcast with the promise of a stormy morrow. Suddenly Helen started and
glanced hastily at the window behind her, where the shade was drawn.
"What's that?" she whispered.
"Huh?" said Ann.
"I didn't hear anything," Ruth added.
Not a word from Amy Gregg, who likewise appeared to be deeply immersed in
her book.
Another silence; then both Ruth and Helen jumped. "I declare! Is that a
bird or a beast?" Helen demanded.
"What is it?" cried Ann, starting up.
"Somebody rapping on that window," Ruth declared.
"This far up from the ground? Nonsense!" exclaimed the bold Ann, and
marched to the casement and ran up the shade.
They could see nothing. There was no light in the roadway before the
house. Ann opened the window and leaned out.
"Nobody down there throwing up gravel, that's sure," she declared, drawing
in her head again, and shutting the window.
Just as they returned to their books the scratching, squeaking noise broke
out again. This time Ruth ran to see.
"Nothing!" she confessed.
"What do you suppose it can be?" asked Helen nervously. "I declare, I
can't study any more. That gets on my nerves."
Mrs. Smith put in her head at that moment. "Of course you haven't seen
that boy, any of you?" she asked sharply.
The three older girls looked at each other; Amy Gregg continued to pore
over her book. No; Ruth, Helen and Ann could honestly tell Mrs. Smith that
they had not seen Curly.
"Well, the young rascal has slipped out. I went up to his door to take him
some clothes I had mended, and he didn't answer. So I opened the door, and
his bed hasn't been touched, and he went up an hour ago. He's slipped out
over the shed roof, for his window's open; though I don't see how he dared
drop to the ground. It's twenty feet if it's an inch," Mrs. Smith said
sternly.
"I shall wait up for him and catch him when he comes back. I'll learn him
to go out nights without me knowin' of it."
She went away, stepping wrathfully. "Goodness! I'm sorry for that boy,"
said Ann, beginning leisurely to prepare for bed.
But Ruth watched Amy Gregg curiously. She saw the smaller girl flush and
pale and glance now and then toward the window. Ruth jumped to a sudden
conclusion. Curly was somewhere outside that window on the roof!