A TRAGIC DISAPPEARANCE
“I THINK we ought to send for Babbie,” declared Madeline Ayres a day or
two later.
“To talk ploshkin?” asked Betty. The ploshkin project was still, to
Mary’s great disgust, being discussed pro and con.
“Yes,” assented Madeline, “and to have a say about our keeping the
tea-room open for dinners. Also, and most important of all, to save
Young-Man-Over-the-Fence from an early grave.”
“Oh, yes, we ought to decide right away about the bill for his party,”
agreed Betty innocently. “At least, we have decided, haven’t we, that
it was too much fun to take pay for? But we ought to let him know.”
“Yes, we undoubtedly ought, but Babbie hasn’t a thing to do with that
party,” Madeline reminded her.
“That’s so. Then what----” Betty had a sudden inkling of Madeline’s
meaning. “Do you think he’s really interested in Babbie?” she
demanded. “Because Babbie doesn’t like him, and she perfectly hates
having men fall in love with her.”
“She says she does, you mean,” corrected Madeline, “and perhaps she
even thinks she does. But she doesn’t. No girl does, if the man is
worth anything. I like Young-Man-Over-the-Fence myself, probably
because he’s so optimistic about my literary ability, and I’m sorry I
queered him with Babbie by my premature announcement of his devotion. I
don’t know how I can help matters now, though.”
Betty laughed. “He’ll help them himself, if he wants to, I guess. He
isn’t the kind to give up easily. The very reason Babbie was prejudiced
against him was because of his determined chin. I’ll make out his bill
for the food and the other expenses right now, before I forget it.”
When Mr. Thayer came in for his tea that afternoon and was informed of
the Tally-ho’s decision, he objected vigorously.
“Suppose those girls from the college did help you a little,” he said.
“Give them a spread, if you like, to square things up, and take my
check for yourselves. You really must, you know.”
Betty explained that it had been only fun for everybody, and Madeline
presented her plan for a club-house.
Mr. Thayer smiled sorrowfully. “I’ve thought of that, and I want them
to have one; but if they have a club-house they must have clubs. They
must have clubs anyway, for do you know”--his voice took on a tragic
intensity--“not much over half of them can read and write. Last month I
got a law passed that prohibits their working in this state unless they
can read simple English and write little things like their own names,
and now I find there are no evening schools in this benighted town,
and if there were, what would old men and grown women do in a regular
evening school?”
“Was that the law your father didn’t like?” asked Betty.
Mr. Thayer nodded gloomily. “It’s a perfectly good law, but it’s making
me no end of trouble. Miss Wales, I’ve noticed that you always seem to
come to the rescue of despairing mortals. Can’t you suggest something?”
Betty shook her head thoughtfully. Instead of coming to any one’s
rescue she had got to dismiss her extra waitresses again. Nobody
had time for lunches and teas just before midyears, and even if the
tea-shop should decide to serve dinners a little later, she might be
able, with the longer hours, to get on without extra help. Then she
remembered something funny that had come in her morning mail.
“I must be queer,” she declared, “because people--despairing
mortals--want me to do such funny things for them. This morning I had a
letter from a father whose daughter isn’t popular in college, wanting
me to show her how to make friends. And I never even heard of the girl
before!”
“Well, you’ll do it,” Mr. Thayer declared, preparing to take his
leave, “and you’ll help me out somehow, too. I’ve got three months’
grace from the factory commission, before my employees must begin to
attend school. Meanwhile I shall put an architect to work on plans for
the club-house you’ve compelled me to build by your hundred dollar
donation. And by building the club-house I put you under obligations
to help me with the clubs. That’s even. Good-bye.”
“We’ve gotten ourselves into a lovely fix now,” said Betty solemnly,
staring after him.
“You have, please say,” Madeline corrected. “He doesn’t expect me to do
anything about his old clubs, after the way I piled the Stockings off
on Babbie.”
“I should love it if I had time,” sighed Betty. “It’s the only kind of
teaching I know enough to do, just the plain three R’s,--and you could
feel as if your work counted for something, when they must learn and
can’t in any other way.”
“It would be splendid practice,” added Madeline. “I should almost think
some of the college girls who are going to teach might like to take
classes a night or two each week.”
Betty gave a little cry of pleased assent. “Why, of course! Why didn’t
you think of that when he was here, Madeline? I know they’d like it,
and girls who don’t mean to teach would, too--Fluffy Dutton and Georgia
and their kind. They’d like the queerness of it.”
“I might even take a class myself,” Madeline conceded, “if I were
allowed to choose my pupils. I hereby speak for my fascinating little
Italian boy.”
“It will be a fine chance to practice modern languages, too,” cried
Betty eagerly. “Some girls will like it for that. But the classes
wouldn’t get on very fast, studying only a night a week; and every
night would be a good deal to give. Oh, Madeline, I know what! He could
hire some girls for the big stupid classes that would have to come
several nights a week, and that would help with the Student’s Aid work.”
“You’re worrying about those waitresses again,” said Madeline
accusingly. “I believe you care more about them than you do about
tea-room profits.”
“You don’t really think that, do you, Madeline?” demanded Betty
solemnly, “because the tea-room pays me for looking out for its
profits, and if I didn’t put that ahead of anything else, I shouldn’t
be honest.”
“Of course I don’t think it,” Madeline told her quickly, with a loving
little hug. “You’re altogether too honest, and you work lots harder
than you ought to. If we decide to serve dinners, I shall insist on
your having an assistant. And that will be more help for the Student’s
Aid,” she added mockingly, and went off to Dramatic Club’s dress
rehearsal of the Masque of the Twelfth Night Cakes.
A few moments later the carriage lamp above Betty’s desk flickered
uncertainly and grew dim.
“Oh, dear, I never filled one lamp this morning!” sighed Betty. The
stove and the lamps were the hardest things in her winter’s experience.
Bridget had announced, soon after her arrival, that she couldn’t be
“bothered wid ony ile lamps,” and Nora had remarked pointedly that
nowadays you needn’t expect any girl to fuss with those old-fashioned
ways of lighting. So Betty, valuing Bridget and Nora too highly to take
any risks, had quietly assumed the care of the lamps and later of the
stove. She didn’t dare to carry a light near the kerosene can, and in
groping her way to it she tore her sleeve on a nail and got a sliver in
her finger. She had pinned together the tear and taken out the sliver,
and she was sitting by the open fire, trying to finish up the repairs
by smoothing out her ruffled temper, when Eugenia Ford appeared,
looking provokingly spick-and-span and elegant in new furs that her
father had just sent her.
“He knew he was mean to keep me here over Christmas,” said Eugenia,
when she had duly exhibited her treasures. “Is your headache all gone,
Miss Wales?”
Betty laughed. “I’d forgotten that I ever had one. That was two days
ago, wasn’t it? I was sorry to make you miss a lesson.”
“Oh, it didn’t matter,” Eugenia said easily. She was in a very
complacent mood to-day. “I told Miss Ayres that it didn’t matter. I’ve
had two ‘very goods’ said to me in geometry recitations this week, and
I wasn’t sat upon in Lit. to-day. That’s the most of a compliment you
can hope for in Lit. unless you’re a perfect wizard.”
“Well, don’t get careless and let things go,” Betty warned her
solemnly. “And when you’re cramming, if you find one single little
thing that you don’t understand, you’d better come and let me explain
about it.” Betty flushed uncomfortably. The financial side of such
affairs she found very embarrassing. “It won’t be anything extra; it
will just be a favor to me. I shall feel so nervous until I know you’re
through all right.”
Eugenia nodded brusquely. “I suppose they’re always dreadfully down on
people who’ve had warnings, but I guess I shall get along.” She seemed
restless and ill at ease somehow, saying almost nothing, answering
Betty’s questions at random, not even noticing the ploshkin that she
had gone into raptures over when she had seen it before, or inquiring
for little Dorothy, as she did invariably whenever she came in.
“She’s probably worried to death and too proud to let me see it,” Betty
decided; but that was an absurd supposition, considering all the tears
that Eugenia had taken small pains to dissemble. Finally it came out.
“I must be going,” Eugenia announced at last with sudden briskness. “I
only stopped to inquire for your headache. Oh, yes--and I presume I’d
better take my theme, because it’s due to-morrow morning, and I may not
be down this way again. Did you read it, Miss Wales?”
Betty’s brow puckered in perplexity. “Your theme? Were you to have
one ready for the other day? I thought it was only the last six
propositions in geometry that we were going over together. Madeline
didn’t give me any theme.”
“No,” explained Eugenia. “I didn’t tell her anything about it. I just
dropped it on your desk. I thought you’d notice it and read it, and if
you found anything fearfully wrong, I could fix it over.”
“But I don’t understand what theme it was. We went over all those that
I assigned; and you revised them, and then we went over them again.”
“This was my ‘final,’” explained Eugenia.
“Your ‘final’!” Betty’s tone was full of dismay. “But I wasn’t to see
that, Eugenia. That’s to be entirely your own work, like all the themes
you handed in before you were warned. Don’t you remember I told you
how Miss Raymond called a meeting of English tutors to explain that
they were to give no help of any kind on the ‘final’ theme; and she
announced it in classes too, didn’t she?”
“Oh, yes, if you take it that way”--Eugenia assumed an air of injured
innocence. “Most of the tutors don’t. You see, Miss Wales, some of
the girls are worried to death and bother their tutors for ideas and
pointers until the poor things just about write their freshmen’s themes
to get rid of them. Of course they won’t--or they oughtn’t to--do that
with the ‘final.’ That’s the help Miss Raymond meant.”
“So is reading it over and making suggestions giving help,” Betty
objected. “She meant help of any kind--or at least that was what she
said.”
Eugenia shrugged her shoulders. “All right,” she said. “There’s no
harm done, as long as you haven’t even seen the old thing. It’s due
to-morrow anyway, and all I expected you to tell me was little things
like misspelled words or slips of the pen. I couldn’t copy it all over
to-night possibly.”
Betty always tried to put the best construction on actions that didn’t
seem to her quite honorable. “Oh, if that’s all you wanted, why I don’t
suppose any one would object. But it’s better to keep exactly to Miss
Raymond’s regulations, don’t you think so? If you try hard, you can
find little things like misspelled words for yourself. You will go over
it carefully, won’t you?” Betty added earnestly. “I heard of a girl
once who was conditioned on account of bad spelling. That would be a
perfect shame, after all the time we’ve spent studying really hard
things like outlines.”
While she talked, Betty was looking through her pigeonholes, where neat
little piles of bills and memoranda for the different parts of the
tea-room business were kept. After one week of chaos she had decided
that order was the first law of business; and since then her desk had
been a model of neatness and system.
“Where did you say you left the theme, Eugenia?” she asked after a
minute, looking up from her search.
“Right out on top,” explained Eugenia. “Isn’t it there? Seems to me
a drawer was open. Maybe it got slipped in by mistake with something
else, when the drawer was shut.”
Betty opened every drawer and looked carefully through the contents.
Then she went through the pigeonholes again, while Eugenia waited,
anxiety fast taking the place of her serene assurance.
“It’s not here,” Betty announced at last. “Are you perfectly sure you
left it, Eugenia?”
“Perfectly. You see,” Eugenia, being thoroughly frightened, became,
according to her custom, perfectly frank and open. “You see I knew
you’d think it was cheating to help on a ‘final,’ no matter if
all--well, some,” she amended hastily, “of the regular tutors do it. So
I folded it up and laid it on your desk where I thought you’d naturally
pick it up to see what it was. And after you’d begun it, I thought
you’d finish out of curiosity, because you’re so interested in my not
flunking. And if you thought it was a fright I just hoped you wouldn’t
be able to resist bringing it to me to revise. I guess it wasn’t
honest, and I never mean to actually cheat,” ended Eugenia, with a
feeling for nice distinctions, “so I’m really and truly glad you didn’t
find it before. But it must be there, Miss Wales. It simply must.”
“It isn’t,” Betty answered with decision. “I’ve looked twice at every
single paper.”
“Then somebody has taken it.”
Betty considered. “You might have picked it up yourself, Eugenia, with
your other things, in a fit of absent-mindedness. The maids never touch
this desk. The only other person who could possibly have moved it is
Madeline. She was writing here, I think, the day you say you left it.
She’s up on the campus now. You go and hunt through your room, and as
soon as she comes home, I’ll ask her about it.”
“Suppose we don’t either of us find it?” queried Eugenia anxiously.
“Oh, we shall find it,” Betty assured her. “I’m almost sure you took it
off.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t, Miss Wales,” declared Eugenia. “I know I didn’t,
but I’ll go and look. And if I don’t find it, I shall come right back
here to see if Miss Ayres has it. Oh, just think--what if it’s lost for
keeps?” Eugenia fastened her sable furs as unconcernedly as if they had
been last year’s style and squirrel, and rushed off, her eyes big with
terror.
Betty went over the desk again, just to be doing something. Just before
Madeline arrived, she remembered the secret drawer. The theme was in
that, of course! When Madeline declared that she hadn’t seen it, and
that it couldn’t be with her papers, because she hadn’t had any on the
desk for five days, Betty insisted on her opening the secret drawer.
“I simply must learn to open it,” she said. “I knew something would get
lost in there, and if you were away, I shouldn’t be able to get it out.
There, Madeline, that’s the way you did it the first time you opened
it. I think I shall remember now. Oh, it isn’t there! I do hope she’s
found it herself.”
But a minute later Eugenia burst in, arrayed in her roommate’s oldest
raincoat, furs and complacence alike discarded. “Have you found it?”
she cried. “Because I knew I shouldn’t, and I didn’t.”
“Oh, Eugenia! No, it isn’t here. Madeline, do come and suggest what to
do.”
Madeline was as sympathetic as possible, but even her vaunted
resourcefulness could find no feasible remedy for Eugenia’s plight.
“Ask for more time,” she began.
“She won’t give it unless you’ve been sick,” Eugenia objected.
“Go home and write your theme to-night. You can do it, with coffee and
wet towels. If your matron is fussy about lights, come down to our
house.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” declared Eugenia tragically. “I can’t hurry on
themes. I’m as slow as a snail when I try to write sense. I spent six
evenings on this, outside of copying.”
“Then go and explain that you’ve lost it, and throw yourself on the
lady’s tender mercies. Go right away, so she won’t be irritated
beforehand by all the other regular eleventh hour excuses.”
Eugenia considered. “I suppose that’s the only thing to do. If I
hurry I can get there before dinner. Between tea and dinner is her
good-natured time.” Eugenia pulled up the raincoat, which was much too
long for her, and started off.
Half an hour later she was back again, shivering forlornly with the
cold and choking with tears.
“I told her. I told her exactly how I happened to lose it, because she
asked me, and I never thought how awful it would look. She says I’m
a cheat, and don’t deserve more time. She says she’ll flunk me in the
course, and she hopes I’ll flunk enough other things so I can’t stay in
college. Oh, Miss Wales, what shall I do? I told my father I was all
caught up. He doesn’t know about midyears. I guess that wasn’t honest
either, to say I was caught up before I’d passed the exams. If I’m
flunked out now I shan’t ever dare go home. Oh, what shall I do? What
shall I do? What shall I do?”
Betty tucked the forlorn, weeping little bundle into a chair, heaped
more wood on the fire that she had been trying to put out, brewed hot
tea, and hunted through the larder for tempting “left-overs” that
would make up an appetizing little supper for two. When Madeline
and the smallest sister came to see, as Dorothy put it, whether the
ploshkin had caught and killed Betty, she sent them away with a hastily
whispered explanation.
“Now first,” she told Eugenia, “you’re to stop crying or you’ll make
yourself sick, and then where will your midyears be? And secondly
you’re to eat what I’ve cooked, because it isn’t polite to act as if
you didn’t like my cooking. And thirdly you’re to escort me as far as
the door of the Davidson. I’m going to see Miss Raymond. I’m sure you
misunderstood part of what she said, because she isn’t the kind to
speak that way. If she has made up her mind to flunk you, I don’t know
that I can do anything, but I’m going to try.”
“Oh, you mustn’t bother,” moaned Eugenia. “It’s no use. I suppose it
was cheating. You said it was yourself.”
“I ought to have told you specially not to bring the ‘final’ theme
to me,” Betty told her. “And if you did leave it here, why, I’m
responsible in a way for its loss. I shall tell Miss Raymond that. I
can’t have you fail because something you left with me has disappeared
off the face of the earth.”
On their way Betty told Eugenia to walk ahead slowly while she ran up
to bid Dorothy good-night.
“I just hate to go,” she told Madeline. “I don’t know Miss Raymond very
well. If it was Miss Ferris, I should know just what to say; but I’m
afraid Miss Raymond will think it was partly my doings that Eugenia
brought me the theme. I just hate to be mixed up in anything that isn’t
perfectly straight.”
“Then let her get out of it as best she can herself.”
Betty shook her head. “That certainly wouldn’t be straight,” she
declared. “I’m helping her because the theme was lost off my desk--and
because she’s been so sweet to Dorothy.”
After all, the interview wasn’t so dreadful. Miss Raymond began by
thanking Betty for coming at once to explain her side of the affair.
“Though of course I knew all that you have told me about the part you
took,” she said. “But one thing more--do you think Miss Ford is telling
the truth about her part? You think she really wrote the theme?”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure she did,” Betty answered earnestly. “She has queer
ideas about what would be fair and honest, but I’m sure she doesn’t
tell out-and-out lies. Besides, how would she ever think of such a
story?”
“It’s no stranger than others I’ve listened to that proved to be the
invention of girls stupider than Eugenia Ford,” Miss Raymond assured
her smilingly. “But I shall accept your judgment in the matter.”
“And give her a chance to write another theme?” asked Betty eagerly.
Miss Raymond hesitated. “I don’t see how I can do that, when I have
refused half a dozen others who had better excuses. But what’s lost
generally turns up, doesn’t it? Suppose I give Miss Ford three weeks,
in the hope that her theme will come to light. Of course I shall trust
to her honor not to write another and substitute it for the original.”
“But if it doesn’t come to light?” Betty knew just how thoroughly she
had ransacked her desk.
Miss Raymond considered. “Then what I can do will depend on the reports
I get from her other instructors--and from you, if you are to continue
tutoring her.”
Betty blushed violently. “If you remember my themes, Miss Raymond, I
know you think it’s perfectly crazy for me to be tutoring in English.”
And she explained how she had been driven to beginning with Eugenia,
and then not allowed to stop.
“When I see the ‘final’ I can judge better how successful you’ve been,”
Miss Raymond told her cordially, “but I imagine you’ve done good work.
The best writers don’t make the best teachers. What was her subject?”
Betty blushed again. “‘Little Girls.’ I’d kept telling her to take
something definite and something she knew about, instead of hope, and
Japanese gardens, and things of that kind. But ‘Little Girls’ is a sort
of ridiculous title, isn’t it?”
“It sounds rather promising to me,” Miss Raymond said. “I hope I shall
have the opportunity of reading about ‘Little Girls.’ Will you explain
our arrangement to Miss Ford?” And Betty felt that she was dismissed.
She hurried over to tell Eugenia how far she had succeeded, and Eugenia
cheered up perceptibly over the ray of hope held out to her, and even
found heart to taste the fudge that her sympathetic roommate had made
to comfort her.
Betty finished off her evening with a call on Miss Ferris, who assured
her, in answer to her apologetic account of the situation, that she
didn’t in the least regret, nevertheless, having practically compelled
Betty to tutor Eugenia.
“And Eugenia is quite right; you can’t stop now,” she declared
laughingly, and then grew serious. “This episode is hard on both of
you, but it will result in her practicing, if she doesn’t fully accept,
a higher code of honor. Then you say she has learned to work, and this
is her chance to show it. Miss Raymond won’t be hard on her if she
shows that she means to do her best. You didn’t think I expected you to
change all her spots in a minute, did you?”
Betty went home, feeling that a great load was off her shoulders.
To be sure, she was perfectly certain that Eugenia’s theme was lost
“for keeps,” but nobody, not even Eugenia, seemed to blame her. And
something would surely happen to make things come right.
At home something had already happened to make things interesting, in
the shape of a telegram from Babbie, who had decided to come up to
Harding, although Madeline had not yet carried out her plan of sending
for her. And so she didn’t know a word about the ploshkin or the dinner
project. It wasn’t to discuss those, certainly, that she was coming to
Harding.