THE LOST CANOE
It was in October that the hockey squad was announced, and a meeting
held. The list of names which Miss Phillips posted upon the
bulletin-board was examined with breathless interest by every girl in
the school; for there would be no new Scouts chosen from among those who
had not already qualified in hockey.
Except among the fortunate few, a great feeling of disappointment
prevailed all over the school. Girls who knew that their report marks
would be high, and who had looked eagerly forward to becoming Girl
Scouts of Pansy troop, were sick with despair at falling short of the
coveted goal.
For the same reason, however, the few new girls who had made the team
appreciated the honor all the more. It meant a great deal to Mae
VanHorn, who had lost out the previous year, and who cared more for
Marjorie and Frances and Ethel, than any of the other girls in the
school. It brought a feeling of pride to Barbara Hill, who admired Ruth
so ardently. But perhaps it carried the greatest happiness of all to
the three freshmen who were chosen--Florence Evans, Alice Endicott, and
Daisy Gravers. If their marks would only permit them to become Girl
Scouts!
For the past week Marjorie had been happy. With an easy majority, she
had been elected captain of the team, and the position and the
popularity pleased her. Then, too, she spent much of her time with Alice
Endicott, who simply bubbled over with joyousness all the time, so that
it would have required real trouble to allow anyone to be sad in her
presence. And Frieda, although she had never gone so far again in
accepting Marjorie's friendship as she had on that first Sunday
afternoon, was at least civil. She treated Mrs. Johnson with a fair
degree of courtesy, but she seemed to distrust the Scouts, and avoided
them on every occasion. At one time Pansy troop had invited her to go
with them on a hike, but she had refused in a formal little note,
written in an uneven hand, and evidently dictated by her teacher.
"It must have been that insulting remark of Ruth's, the night of the
fête!" Marjorie assured herself, over and over. "Except for that, we'd
probably be good friends by now!"
Then she would remind herself that Frieda really was progressing, that
the troop was doing its part, and that there was actually no cause to
worry.
On one afternoon that was warm and beautiful, and for which there was no
hockey practice scheduled, she was debating in her mind what to do, when
Lily threw open the door.
"Marj!" she exclaimed, "inside, on a day like this!"
"Oh, I'm going out," her room-mate replied slowly. "Only I can't decide
where. What are you going to do?"
"Play tennis with Doris."
"That's nice."
She watched Lily put on her bloomers, which the girls were allowed to
wear on their own courts, and her sneakers, still undecided as to her
course of action.
"Want to play, too?" invited Lily. "Why not get Ruth, and we'll make it
doubles?"
Marjorie wrinkled her nose; in her own mind she still harbored
resentment against Ruth, and the idea of her company was rather
distasteful.
"No--thanks! I don't want to do anything very strenuous."
A knock sounded at their door, and in answer to Lily's cheery, "Come!"
Alice Endicott entered.
"If I bother you people too much, just put me out!" she announced gaily.
"I simply must have company!"
"Not homesick?" asked Marjorie.
"No, indeed! Only I want to go for a walk, or do something; and your
society's so infinitely more pleasant than my own----"
"I'll tell you what I'll do," interrupted Marjorie. "Let's go canoeing!"
Alice clapped her hands with delight. She had never been out in
Marjorie's canoe since the day when their friendship had really started,
and she longed to be invited again.
"Oh, how lovely!" she cried. "And it's such a perfect day!"
"I'll have to send it home at Thanksgiving," remarked Marjorie, as she
and Alice crossed the campus on their way to the lake. "And I don't know
how I'll ever do without it."
"Oh, well, there will be skating," Alice reminded her. "And then, it
will soon be spring again."
They came in sight of the tree to which Marjorie always kept the canoe
tied, and she looked anxiously, as usual, for the first sight of it.
Suddenly, her heart stopped beating: she could not see it!
"Alice!" she shrieked, in terror. "It's gone!"
Alice followed Marjorie's gaze, but she, too, saw no canoe. However, she
attributed no particular significance to that fact.
"It's probably around the other side," she said optimistically: "or
maybe you tied it to another tree."
But as the girls came nearer to the spot, Marjorie knew that she had
been right. They looked all around the small lake; but the canoe was
nowhere to be found!
"Somebody's borrowed it!" suggested Alice, "and probably couldn't find
you to ask permission!"
"But then they'd be on the lake!"
"No--if you should carry the canoe about a hundred yards, you'd find the
stream gets deep enough to paddle. And it goes a long way, too, even
joins a river. I know because once Daisy and I hiked and hiked, meaning
to follow it to the end. There were several swift places where you might
have to carry the canoe a few yards, but it could easily be done."
Marjorie's face brightened at the hope the words offered.
"Let's walk up that way ourselves," she suggested.
Climbing the school fence at the edge of the lake, they followed a
little creek, which, though shallow in many places, could still be
navigated by a canoe.
"Why didn't any of us ever think of this?" remarked Marjorie. "I've
never had the canoe off the lake."
"Couldn't we try it to-morrow?" asked Alice, wondering whether it were
quite the thing for her to suggest.
"Yes, I'd love to!" replied Marjorie. But her expression grew sad again,
as she recalled the circumstances which led them on this walk of
exploration.
The woods were wonderful now, dressed in their gorgeously colored
foliage. Brown, orange, scarlet, with just enough somber evergreen to
set off the brilliancy of the other trees by contrast, the scene was at
the height of its splendor. But so intent were the girls upon watching
the water, they hardly noticed the spectacle.
"Look! Look!" cried Alice suddenly. "There--around that bend! Isn't that
the end of a canoe?"
Marjorie held her hand to her forehead, and shaded her eyes in an effort
to distinguish the object in the distance. But, although she saw what
Alice meant, it was too far off for identification. In their eagerness,
the girls started to run.
Marjorie was the first to stop, realizing her mistake.
"It's a dead tree trunk!" she gasped, out of breath from the exertion.
She stopped and leaned against a tree, tired out and disappointed. But
she resolutely conquered her desire to cry: whatever happened, she must
not break down before a freshman!
"Let's go back," she said. "I'm awfully tired."
"We might as well," said Alice. "For whoever has borrowed it will be
sure to bring it back by supper time."
"Perhaps; but somehow I feel as if it were gone forever! I can't tell
you why----"
"Oh, please don't worry, Marj!" begged the younger girl. "Nobody would
take it!"
They went to Marjorie's room, and discussed the occurrence over and
over. Alice stayed until half-past five, when Lily came back from
tennis.
"Too dark to play!" cried Lily as she threw open the door. "Heavens, why
sit in darkness?"
Marjorie and Alice had hardly noticed the gradually deepening twilight,
so wrapped up were they in the event of the afternoon. They blinked as
Lily flashed on the lights.
"Who won?" asked Marjorie, half-heartedly.
"Doris, of course!" This carelessly. Then, looking closely at her
room-mate, she realized that something was wrong.
"What's happened, Marj? No bad news from home?"
"Oh, no--it isn't that." Marjorie swallowed hard, in the effort to keep
her voice calm. Then, blurting it out, "I've lost my canoe!"
Lily stood perfectly still in open-mouthed amazement, while Alice,
assisted here and there by Marjorie, told of the afternoon's adventure.
But Lily smiled reassuringly.
"You're worrying yourself needlessly, Marj. Somebody's borrowed it, of
course! It couldn't have drifted away--there's no place for it to
drift--and surely nobody would steal it!"
"Somebody must have!" declared Marjorie, feeling now that any moment she
would break down. To her relief, Alice arose to go.
As soon as the door closed upon the retreating freshman, Marjorie began
to sob violently. Lily went over and sat beside her.
"Don't, Marj, please don't!" she begged. "Wait till after supper, at
least. I'll go over and tell Miss Allen all about it the minute I'm
dressed, and we'll see what she can do."
Marjorie dried her eyes, and the girls got ready for supper. In fifteen
minutes, Lily was ready to go.
"Tell Miss Allen not to make an announcement till the very end of the
meal, so that if I get any news of the canoe, I can let her know."
But Marjorie was disappointed to find that no one came up to her with an
explanation or an apology. Unfortunately, too, all the girls were
present at the meal--a circumstance which left her no room for the hope
that one of her school-mates had the canoe.
Just as dessert was being served, she caught Miss Allen's questioning
eyes fastened upon hers, and she shook her head sadly in reply to the
silent interrogation. Accordingly, the Principal arose and told
Marjorie's story, and asked whether anyone had seen the canoe. But there
was no response.
"Girls, I don't suspect anybody," she said, after a few minutes of
silence, "but just for the sake of formality, I will call a meeting for
eight o'clock this evening and ask every girl where she was early this
afternoon, for Marjorie tells me that she saw it herself at one
o'clock."
"Oh, Miss Allen!" interrupted Marjorie, much to everyone's
consternation, "I really don't want to go as far as that! I am sure that
none of the girls took it."
"Somebody might have taken it for a prank," remarked the Principal,
without administering any reproof for the interruption. "And we may as
well go on with the investigation."
There was not a single girl at the school who dared to absent herself
from that meeting. Miss Allen herself presided, and, beginning with the
senior class, she requested each girl in turn to rise and state where
she had spent the early part of the afternoon.
"And whenever another girl can confirm a statement, I wish she would do
so," added Miss Allen.
The meeting proceeded rapidly; the girls, a little nervous at the
recital in public of their own affairs, nevertheless spoke swiftly; and,
without a single exception, their statements were all confirmed by other
girls.
The whole proceeding served only to intensify Marjorie's despondency.
Now, she felt, the girls might think that she suspected them, which in
reality had never been the case. When Miss Allen had suggested a joke,
her mind naturally flew to Ruth; but now that the whole affair had
assumed such serious proportions, she dismissed that solution from her
thoughts.
The last freshman in the school was recounting her afternoon's program,
when one of the housemaids threw open the door.
The faces all swung instantly around, and the speaker became silent. The
newcomer announced her mission without delay:
"An important message for Miss Phillips," she said. "I took it over the
telephone."
"Will you give it to me?" asked the latter, rising and advancing to take
what she expected to be a written message.
"Yes, ma'am; I didn't write it down," she replied. And before Miss
Phillips could warn her not to inform the whole school, she shouted out,
to the surprise of everyone,
"_Mrs. Johnson sent word that Frieda Hammer has been missing since
half-past one this afternoon._"
"With Marjorie Wilkinson's canoe!" exclaimed Ruth, in a tone that was
audible all over the assembly room.