Produced by Al Haines
[Transcriber's note: The source book was missing pages 145-6, and
159-160, and many of its illustrations. Should you happen to have this
book, with the missing material, please email their scans to Project
Gutenberg's (www.gutenberg.org) Errata reporting email address.]
[Frontispiece: "SHE FILLED HER APRON WITH THE CRISP, FRESH COOKIES."]
RUBY AT SCHOOL
The Third Volume of the Ruby Series
BY
MINNIE E. PAULL
AUTHOR OF "RUTH AND RUBY," "RUBY'S UPS AND DOWNS,"
"PRINCE DIMPLE SERIES," "DOROTHY DARLING," ETC.
BOSTON
ESTES AND LAURIAT
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1894,
BY ESTES AND LAURIAT.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. RUBY IN MISCHIEF
II. CARRYING OUT HER PLAN
III. LOOKING FOR RUBY
IV. CONSEQUENCES
V. BOARDING-SCHOOL
VI. PREPARATIONS
VII. MORE PREPARATIONS
VIII. READY
IX. THE JOURNEY
X. MAKING FRIENDS
XI. AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
XII. MAKING ACQUAINTANCE
XIII. GETTING SETTLED
XIV. SCHOOL
XV. BEGINNING SCHOOL
XVI. MAUDE'S TROUBLES
XVII. LEARNING
XVIII. MISADVENTURES
XIX. SURPRISES
XX. PERSIMMONS
XXI. MAUDE
XXII. SUNDAY AT SCHOOL
XXIII. GETTING READY FOR CHRISTMAS
XXIV. FINIS
ILLUSTRATIONS.
"SHE FILLED HER APRON WITH THE CRISP, FRESH COOKIES" . . .
_Frontispiece_
RUBY AND HER MOTHER (missing from book)
RUBY MEETING MAUDE AT THE STATION (missing)
RUBY WRITING A LETTER HOME
"MRS. BOARDMAN WAS VERY PATIENT WITH THE SPOILED CHILD" (missing)
MISS KETCHUM AND THE CATERPILLARS (missing)
"OH, IT HAS DONE SOMETHING TO MY MOUTH!" (missing)
READING THE INVITATION TO AGNES (missing)
RUBY AT SCHOOL.
CHAPTER I.
RUBY IN MISCHIEF.
It does seem quite too bad to begin a new Ruby book with Ruby in
mischief the very first thing; and yet what can I do but tell you about
it? for it is very probable that if she had not been in this particular
piece of mischief, this story would never have been written. "Nobody
but Ruby would ever have thought of such a thing," Ann exclaimed, when
it was discovered, and it really did seem as if Ruby thought of naughty
things to do that would never have entered any one else's head.
Ruby had certainly been having one of her "bad streaks," as Nora called
her particularly mischievous times, and perhaps this was because Ruby
had been left to herself more than she had ever been in all her life
before.
Mamma was sick, and she was only able to have Ruby come into her room
when the little girl was willing to be very quiet and move about
gently, so as not to disturb her; and she knew very little of what Ruby
was about in the long hours which she spent in play.
All summer Ruby had been running wild, coming into the house only to
eat her meals, or towards evening nestling down beside mamma, to talk
to her for a little while about what she had been doing all day. I am
afraid it was not very often that Ruby told her of the many things she
had been doing of which she knew mamma would not approve at all.
When Ruby went over to Mrs. Warren's house to visit Ruthy, Mrs. Warren
tried to have her do as she wished her own little girl to do, but she
found it a very much harder matter to govern quick-tempered, impulsive
Ruby than it was to guide her own gentle little daughter, and she often
sighed as she thought how distressed Ruby's mamma would be if she knew
how self-willed and mischievous her little daughter was growing without
her mother's care.
Ruby's papa was very busy with his patients, and when he was at home he
spent most of his time in the invalid's room, so he did not have any
idea how much the little girl needed some one to look after her, and
see that she did not get into mischief.
Ann did her best to take care of Ruby, but she had more work to do than
usual, so she had very little time to keep watch of the little girl;
and besides, Ruby would not mind Ann unless she said she would tell Dr.
Harper if Ruby was naughty, and Ann did not like to complain of Ruby if
she could help it.
Altogether you can see that Ruby had a pretty good opportunity to be
just as naughty as she wanted to be; and every day it did seem as if
she thought of more mischievous things to do than she had ever done in
all her life put together before.
Ruby was having a very nice time this afternoon all by herself. It
would have been nicer to have had Ruthy to help her enjoy it, but Mrs.
Warren was not willing to let Ruthy go over to Mrs. Harper's, now that
there was no one to see what the two little girls were about. Ruthy
could be trusted not to get into any mischief by herself, but sometimes
she yielded to Ruby's coaxing when she had devised some piece of
mischief, and then no one knew what the two little girls would do next.
Some carpenters had been at work down by the stable, building a new
hen-house, and Ruby had made a playhouse for herself with the boards
they had left. She had leaned them up against the low branch of an old
tree, with Ann's help, for the boards were rather too heavy for her to
move alone, and so she had a tent-shaped house of boards in which she
thought it was great fun to play.
Ruby's favorite story was the "Swiss Family Robinson," and she thought
that no greater happiness could befall any one than to be cast away
upon a desert island. As long as there did not seem to be any prospect
of a desert island before her, when the largest piece of water she had
ever seen in her life was the small shallow pond where the boys got
water-lilies in summer, and skated in winter, she thought the next best
thing would be to live in this little house, and not go home at all,
except to see her mother.
She was very sure that the rest of the family would not approve of this
plan at all, so she did not say anything to them about it, but
determined to try it and see how she liked it, without running any
chances of being forbidden.
One day, when she knew Ann was busy up in her mother's room, and no one
would see what she was doing, she ran up to the garret, and brought
down a pair of blankets, an old comforter, and the little pillow that
belonged to the crib in which she had slept when she was a baby. She
carried all these out to her little playhouse in the yard, and has only
just tucked away the last corner of the comforter out of sight, when
she heard the sound of wheels as her father's buggy drove into the yard.
Ruby ran out to meet him, afraid that he might come and look into her
little wooden tent, and see what she had taken from the house. She was
very sure that he would not at all approve of her plan of spending the
night out there alone. She slipped her hand into his, and walked up to
the house with him, and then ran back to her play.
After dinner she chose a time when Nora would not be in the kitchen,
and carried some provisions down to her little house; for though she
wanted to imitate the Swiss Family Robinson as far as possible, she was
not sure that she would be able to find meals for herself as readily as
they did; so, though biscuits and cookies were not at all the sort of
food shipwrecked people generally eat, she thought that she had better
lay in a supply of them, particularly as there were no kindly cocoanut
or bread-fruit trees growing at hand.
She filled her apron with the crisp fresh cookies which Ann had just
made, and with biscuit from the stone crock, and then spying a little
turnover which she was sure Ann had made for her, she added that to her
store.
It began to look quite like a castaway's tent, Ruby imagined, as she
sat down in her little house and looked around. To be sure, you would
hardly expect any one wrecked upon a desert island to have such a
comfortable roof of boards over his head, and certainly one would not
find a supply of warm, dry bed-clothing at hand, nor fresh cookies; but
Ruby was quite satisfied, and she thought it would be great fun to
spend the night out there all by herself, and imagine herself in the
midst of a forest all alone. She shut her eyes, and as the wind
rustled the branches of the tree, she pretended that she heard the
waves breaking upon the shore of her desert island, and that chattering
monkeys were jumping about over her head in the branches of great palm
and tall cocoanut-trees.
If Ruthy could only be cast away with her it would be ever so much
nicer, for then she would not have to enjoy it all by herself; but she
reflected that it was just as well that Ruthy could not come over and
play, for she probably would be afraid to sleep out there, and would
cry and want to go into the house just when the play grew the most
interesting.
No thought of fear entered venturesome Ruby's mind. It would be an
easy matter for her to slip out of the house after she was supposed to
be fast asleep in her trundle bed, which was not beside her mother's
bed any longer, but in a room by itself. Ruby did not know that the
the last thing her father did every night before he went to bed, was to
go and take a look at his little girl, and see that she was sleeping
comfortably; and very often he went into her room in the evening, soon
after she had gone to sleep.
Of course she knew that she was going to do a naughty thing, but I am
sorry to say that Ruby did not very often let that interfere with
anything she wanted to do now, she had her own way so much.
She was so excited over her plan for the night that she was very quiet
all the rest of the afternoon, and Ann said rather suspiciously,--
"You're up to some new mischief, Ruby Harper, I'll venture, or you
would never be so quiet all at once. I know you. Now do be a good
girl, and don't keep worrying your poor ma so about you."
"Never you mind what I am going to do," answered Ruby, pertly, and just
then Ann saw that her cookies were missing.
"Well, where on earth are all my cookies?" she exclaimed. "Now, Ruby
Harper, you tell me this very minute what you have been doing with
them. I know just as well as anything that you never ate such a lot as
that, and I don't see what you could have been doing with them. You go
and get them and fetch them back to me right away."
Ruby made a face at her and darted away. She was not going to bring
the cookies back nor tell where they were. What would she do when she
was shipwrecked if she did not have a store of provisions in her hut,
as she called her little house.
She knew it would not do to tell Nora about her plan, and she was so
full of it that she felt as if she could not keep it to herself any
longer, so she ran over to Ruthy's house.
She found Ruthy playing with her paper dolls on the wide back porch,
and for a few minutes she pretended that she had come over to see her
paper nieces and nephews, for the children always called themselves
aunts to each other's dolls.
"Oh, I have got a plan to tell you about, Ruthy," she said presently.
"I don't want any one to hear me telling you about it, so let's go down
under the apple-tree, with the dolls."
Ruthy gathered up her children, and in a few moments the two little
girls were sitting side by side on the low bench, which Ruthy's father
had put there just for their comfort.
"It's the grandest plan," began Ruby.
"Am I in it, too?" asked Ruthy, half wistfully and half fearfully. She
always liked to be in Ruby's plans, and felt a little left out when her
little friend wanted to do without her, and yet sometimes Ruby's plans
were so very extraordinary that she did not enjoy helping to carry them
out at all.
"Well, you could be in it, only you see you can't very well," Ruby
answered in a rather mixed up fashion.
"Why can't I?" Ruthy asked.
"Well, I'll tell you all about it, and then you will see that you
couldn't very well," Ruby answered. "But first of all you must
promise me honest true, black and blue, that you will never, never
breathe a word of it to any one."
"Not even to mamma?" asked Ruthy, who always felt better when she told
her mother all about everything.
"No, not to anyone in all the wide world," Ruthy answered. "I won't
tell you a single word unless you promise, and you will be awfully
sorry if I don't tell you, for this is the most splendid plan I ever
made up in all my life. It is just like a book."
Ruthy's curiosity overcame her scruples about knowing something which
she could not tell her mother.
"All right, I won't tell a single person," she said, earnestly. "Tell
me what it is."
"Promise across your heart," Ruby insisted, for just then the little
girls had a fashion of thinking that promising across their hearts made
a promise more binding than any other form of words.
"I promise, honest true, black and blue, 'crost my heart," Ruthy said
very earnestly, and then the two heads were put close together while
Ruby whispered her wonderful secret.
No one could have heard them, not even the birds in their nests up in
the tree, if she had spoken aloud, but a secret always seemed so
delightfully mysterious when it was whispered, that she rarely told one
aloud.
"I am going to be cast away on a desert island," she said, and Ruthy's
blue eyes opened to their widest extent.
"Why, how can you, when there is n't any desert island anywhere near
here for miles and miles?" she exclaimed.
"Oh, you are so stupid," Ruby exclaimed impatiently. "Of course I mean
to pretend I am cast away. I am going to pretend that down by the barn
is a desert island, and that little house I have built with boards is
my hut, and I am going to sleep out there all by myself to-night, and I
have some provisions and everything all ready."
"But will you dare stay out there all alone when it gets dark?" asked
Ruthy in awed tones, feeling quite satisfied that she was left out of
this plan, for she knew she should never dare to do such a thing, no
matter how much Ruby might want her to join her.