SUSPICION HOVERS
Fortunate it was that lessons began on Monday, and that there were
certain preparations to be made for them. Likewise, there was some work
for Beth’s nimble fingers, for some of the girls who had arrived at
Rivercliff first, had actually brought their summer’s mending with them.
“For you do it much nicer than I can get it done at home, Baldwin,”
cried one.
“I tell you, Beth, you are an institution,” Mamie Dunn declared. “I
don’t know what we should do without you. I, for one, would go in rags.”
So Beth did not have much time to worry over Mrs. Severn’s odd action.
She merely comforted herself by saying that rich old ladies--especially
with parrots and foreign maids--are apt to be fanciful.
Miss Hammersly called Beth into her office for a special interview on
one of the days soon after the opening of the term.
“I am pleased to see you with us for another year, Beth,” she said,
with that shade of cordiality with which she always received her
second year pupils. “You have come, I presume, fully prepared to take
up your studies with renewed vigor and a steady application?”
“Oh yes, Miss Hammersly,” Beth said cheerfully. “I love to study.”
“And you will--ahem!--make no engagements which will interfere with
recitations or study hours?”
“No,” and Beth flushed a little. “Madam Hammersly tells me she has
engaged a girl to do my dusting.”
“Yes; at my suggestion,” said the principal. “Besides, I think it
debarred you from proper physical exercise--which you need, Beth.”
“Yes, Miss Hammersly. I will try to make it up in some other way,” said
the girl, doubtfully. With both Mrs. Severn’s work and the dusting
lost, Beth was worried about the future.
“By the way,” Miss Hammersly said. “Do you help Mrs. Ricardo Severn
this fall?”
For some reason Beth could not keep from blushing. “No, Miss
Hammersly,” she said. “I expected to, and I went to her home on
Saturday prepared to do so; but I was informed that my services were
not wanted any more.”
“By whom were you so informed?” the principal asked quickly.
“Why, Mrs. Severn really told me herself--in writing. She sent down a
note,” said Beth, somewhat surprised at the interest the principal of
Rivercliff displayed in the matter.
“You--are you familiar with Mrs. Severn’s handwriting?” questioned Miss
Hammersly.
“Oh, yes. She has sent me notes before.”
“Do you not think it strange, Beth?”
“Ye-es; in a way. But I know she is notional.”
“Did you know that she sent here after you in June--the very day after
the school closed?”
“Sent for me?” cried Beth, in amazement.
“Yes.”
“Why--how odd! She knew I was going away. I bade her good-bye.”
“Of course, you can imagine no reason for her treating you so now?”
“None at all. Unless she may have found somebody else to amuse her. I
do not really think,” confessed Beth, flushing again, and dimpling,
“that it was my work she cared for so much as my chatter. She likes to
be amused.”
Miss Hammersly smiled--yet her gravity returned instantly. “Very well,”
she said, tapping on her desk with her pencil in a thoughtful way. “You
may go, Beth.”
Beth continued at times to wonder about Mrs. Severn’s refusal to see
her when she called. That she could not understand. She believed that
the foreign maid did not like her and might have influenced Mrs. Severn
against Beth herself by some means, although the girl could not imagine
how.
The opening of a new school year is like the picking up of scattered
stitches with a knitting needle. Not only must the mind become attuned
to lessons and to discipline again, but one’s former friends must be
greeted, new friendships made, and--unfortunately--old enmities and
feuds attended to.
Rivalries always will exist where youths congregate--in school, or
elsewhere. The very system of education followed at Rivercliff fostered
rivalries. And a healthy competition between students is always of
benefit.
Warped and selfish natures, however, can never enter into any struggle
and play the game with fairness. The “give and take” of the playground
can never please these.
Although Miss Hammersly and her instructors watched the two hundred and
more girls at Rivercliff School as closely as was wise, they could not
foresee all feuds nor could they break them up when once started. Maude
Grimshaw and her friends continued at times to vent upon Beth their
spleen; and occasionally they succeeded in ruffling the placid surface
of Beth’s life.
Ordinarily, “Princess Fancyfoot,” as Molly called Maude, was content to
lift her sharp nose to a more acute angle when she noticed Beth or to
cast a slurring remark or two in her direction. These attentions Beth
did not allow to trouble her soul.
She seldom came in direct contact with Maude. To tell the truth, Maude
was not a brilliant scholar. Beth and Molly were forging far ahead of
the heiress to the Grimshaw millions. Molly had been fired by Beth’s
example and wished to become self-supporting, too; and was preparing
herself to teach.
“I don’t care what Aunt Cyril says,” Molly announced. “She thinks it
beneath a Granger to earn money at any occupation. Aunt Charlotte is
more practical. She tells me she will take the money I earn teaching
and invest it for me so that it will earn at least seven per cent.
Then, she says, I will have something to make me independent in my old
age. For, you see, Bethesda, my father spent all his patrimony on the
heathen, so I have nothing but what the aunts give me.
“It looks as though Aunt Charlotte had an uncanny belief that I shall
remain an old maid like all the other ‘Granger girls,’” and she made a
little face at the thought.
With all her hard work at her books and in the “hospital,” Beth
went in for at least one relaxation. She played an excellent game at
basket-ball, and there was great rivalry at Rivercliff in this athletic
pastime.
Beth and Molly had won places on the second basket-ball team and, now
that a class had graduated, there was an opening on the first team.
This team played championship games against club teams in Jackson City
and other first school teams about the State. Basket-ball was a game of
which Miss Hammersly herself particularly approved.
The rivalry for the post of honor on the first team waxed high during
the first four weeks of the term. The first regular game of the season,
with a team from the Jackson City Academy, was to be played on one of
the Rivercliff courts.
The chums in Numbers Eighty and Eighty-one, Maude Grimshaw, who could
be active if she so chose, Stella Price, and a girl named Pratt, were
the contestants for the place of honor on the first team.
Between Beth and Molly it was just a zestful rivalry for first
place; the chums were, of course, good natured about it. There was
some acerbity between the others, perhaps. In the case of Maude, she
naturally fought “tooth and nail,” as Molly said, and was as unpleasant
about it as possible.
The physical instructor, Miss Crossleigh, and the other members of the
first basket-ball team, decided by vote for the girl who was to make
the team. Each candidate who was passed by Miss Crossleigh, was tried
out in practice games before the last Saturday in September.
On that day Molly came to the breakfast table a little late, both
flushed and excited.
“Well! it’s all over, girls,” she confided to the table in general.
“What’s all over--the sky?” giggled one of her hearers.
“The contest for the first team. Miss Crossleigh has just written up
the names on the gym board. It’s all over but the shouting.”
“Oh! who’s got it?” cried two or three at once.
Maude stopped eating and flashed a look at Molly. “I’d like to know
what you know about it?” she demanded.
“I tell you Miss Crossleigh has just written up the names of the girls
who will play Jackson City next week.”
“Who’s the new one? Not you, Molly, I’ll be bound,” cried Stella Price.
Molly could no longer control her smiles. Yet she said, a bit ruefully:
“Not guilty! Poor lil’ Molly wins not, of course. She never does.”
“Who is it?” demanded Maude, eagerly.
“Why, Maude! who could it be?” drawled Molly, wickedly. “There was
never but one girl of us that really had a chance from the start.”
Maude’s complacent and conscious expression was delightful.
“Of course, I knew----” she began, with a toss of her head, when Molly
interposed with:
“We all knew! Hail to the chieftainess! Beth! get up and bow. _You’re
elected._”
“_What?_” shrieked Maude.
“How horrid!” exclaimed Laura Hedden, loyally.
A general laugh went around the table. “Speech! Speech!” clamored the
girls.
Beth got up, flushing, and bowed with mock solemnity. “I am
overpowered,” she said. “You must excuse me. Besides, I am hungry.”
“Well! if that isn’t the very meanest thing!” hissed Maude Grimshaw.
“That pauper has no more right to the place than--than----”
“Pass the butter!” advised Mamie Dunn, springing the old joke on Maude.
Maude, however, was not to be so easily silenced on this occasion. She
rose up haughtily, her usually colorless face ugly with splotches of
red.
“Let me tell you--all you smarties,” she said, greatly enraged--“that
this has been a most unfairly conducted contest. You all know it.
Success has not gone to the best player, but to one who is, in some
mysterious way, momentarily popular. Perhaps it is out of pity for her
poverty that Miss Baldwin has been given the place on the first team, a
place that belongs to a better player.”
“Yourself, for instance?” drawled Molly. “With two fumbles and three
interferences to your credit when you were last tried out?”
“Not my fault!” snapped back Maude.
“Oh, hush, Grimshaw!” advised a senior. “You’re making yourself
ridiculous; don’t you know that? And Miss Carroll is looking this way.”
“Let Miss Carroll hear,” hissed Maude. “All the teachers had better
hear. We are supposed to be decently honest in this school; but all of
us are not.”
“Hear! hear!” interposed somebody, _sotto voce_. “Confession is good
for the soul.”
“You think you are smart!” flared up Maude, looking around without
identifying the speaker. “But perhaps it would be just as well if some
inquiry were made as to why this new member of the first basket-ball
team came to be turned out of Severn Lodge and forbidden even to go
there again. Oh! I know what I am talking about--and so does she.”
With this last phrase spoken in a most insolent way, Maude stalked
from the table. Molly jumped up to follow her, “spitting like a bad
firecracker,” as somebody said; but Beth pulled her back into her seat.
“Now Maude’s exploded again,” said Stella, wearily. “Don’t follow her
example please, Molly Granger.”
“Pshaw! she is not worth worrying about, Miss Baldwin,” declared
another girl.
But a whisper went around the table. It had an echo, too, in Beth’s
heart:
“What did Maude mean about Severn Lodge?”