Betty Gordon at Boarding School - Alice Emerson
She set the suitcase out into the aisle with a decided bang, and lifted
up the wicker lunch basket. To the glee of the watching young people, as
she lifted it to the rack, two china cups, several teaspoons and a silver
cream jug sifted down. The cups broke on the floor and the other articles
rolled under the seats.
"Get 'em, quick!" cried the owner. "My two best cups broken, and I
thought I had them packed so well! Pick up those teaspoons, some of
you--they're solid silver!"
"If you don't mind boys pawing them--" began Teddy Tucker, but Betty
intervened.
"Oh, don't!" she protested softly. "Don't be so mean. Pick them up,
please do."
So down on their hands and knees went the six lads, and if, in their
earnestness, they bumped into the elderly woman's hat box, and knocked
down her books, that really should not be held against them.
"Now for mercy's sake, don't let me hear from you again," was her
speech of thanks to them when the teaspoons had been recovered and
restored to her.
She might have been severely left alone after this, if Sydney Cooke had
not discovered a remarkable peculiarity she possessed. Sydney was a great
lover of games, and he had brought his pocket checkerboard and men with
him. He persuaded Winifred Marion Brown to play a game with him, and the
rest of the party crowded around to watch.
"I'll trouble you to let me pass," said the owner of the teaspoons, when
Sydney had just made his first play.
The group parted to let her through, closed in again, and opened again
for her when she came back. No one paid any attention to this until she
had made the request four times.
"What ails that woman?" demanded Sydney irritably.
Each time she had passed him she had brushed his elbow, scattering his
checkers about. Ordinarily sweet-tempered, Sydney was beginning to weary
of this performance.
"What do you think?" snickered Bobby Littell. "She takes a white tablet
every five minutes. Honest! I've been watching her. She sits there with
her watch in her hand, and exactly five minutes apart--I've timed
her--she starts for the water cooler. She puts something on her tongue,
swallows a glass of water, and comes back."
"Well, somebody carry her a gallon jug," muttered Sydney impatiently. "I
can't get anywhere if she is going to parade up and down the aisle
incessantly."
"Don't worry," said Tommy Tucker soothingly. "I'll adjust this little
matter for you."
If Sydney had been less interested in his game, he might have felt
slightly apprehensive. The Tucker twins were famous for their
"adjustments."
Tommy went down the aisle and slipped into the seat directly back of the
woman who did not approve of boys. She turned and regarded him hostilely,
but he gazed out at the flying landscape. The moment she turned around,
he ducked to the floor.
"What do you suppose he is doing?" whispered Bobby to Betty. "Tommy can
think up tricks faster than any boy I ever knew."
Whatever Tommy was doing, he finished in a very few moments and sauntered
back to the checker game, his eyes dancing.
Sydney and Winifred were absorbed in their game, and the others, with the
exception of Bobby and Betty, had not noticed Tommy's brief absence.
"Oh, look!" Betty clutched Bobby's arm excitedly. "What has
happened to her?"
The woman, who had sat with her watch in her hand, snapped it shut,
prepared to make another journey to the water cooler. She half rose, an
alarmed expression flitted over her face, and she sank into her seat
again. Tommy's eyes were studiously on the checkerboard.
With one convulsive effort, the woman struggled to her feet, grasped the
bell-cord and jerked it twice, then dropped into her seat and began to
weep hysterically.
The brakes jarred down, and the train came to a sudden stop that sent
many of the passengers m a mad scramble forward.
In a few moments the conductor flung open the car door angrily. Behind
him two anxious young brakesmen peered curiously.
"Anybody in here jerk that bellcord?" demanded the conductor, scowling.
"Certainly. It was I," said the elderly woman loftily.
"Oh, you did, eh?" he bristled, apparently unworried by her opinion.
"What did you do that for? Here you've stopped a whole train."
"I considered it necessary," was the icy reply. "Perhaps you will be good
enough to call a doctor?"
"Are you ill?" the conductor's voice changed perceptibly. "I doubt if
there is a doctor on the train, but I'll see."
"Tell him to hurry," said the woman commandingly. "I think I'm
paralyzed."
"Paralyzed!" Tommy Tucker gave a loud snort and fell over backward into
the arms of his twin.
The conductor shot a suspicious glance toward him. He had traveled on
school trains before.
"You seem to be all right, Madam," he said to the stricken one
courteously. "There's a doctor at the Junction, I'm sure. What makes you
think you're paralyzed?"
"My good man," said the woman majestically, "when a person in good health
and accustomed to normal activity suddenly loses the power to use
her--er--feet, isn't that an indication of some physical trouble?"
Her unfortunate and un-American phrase, "my good man," had nettled the
conductor, and besides his train was losing time.
"We'll miss connections at the Junction if we fool away much more time,"
he said testily. "I wonder--Why look here! No wonder you can't use
your feet!"
To the elderly woman's horror he had swooped down and laid a not
ungentle hand on her ankle in its neat and smart-looking shoe. Now he
took out his knife, slashed twice, and held up the pieces of a stout
length of twine.
"You were tied to the seat-base by the heels of your shoes," he informed
the patient grimly. "One foot tied to the other, too. Well, Jim, take in
your signals--guess we can mosey along."
"And who would have expected her to wear high-heeled boots!" exclaimed
Bobby, with real amazement showing in voice and look.
The few passengers in the car, aside from the school contingent, were
openly laughing. The victim of this practical joke turned a dull red and
the glare she turned on the back of the luckless Tommy's head was proof
enough that she knew exactly where to lay the blame.
However, she said nothing, nor did she make another trip down the aisle
and as Tommy philosophically whispered, this was worth all he had dared
and suffered. Sydney and Winifred finished their game before the Junction
was reached and that brought a wild charge to get on the train that would
carry them to Shadyside station.
To their relief, there was no sign of the elderly woman in the new car,
and as they were all a bit tired from the journey and excitement the
hour's ride to Shadyside from the Junction was comparatively quiet.
Betty looked eagerly from the window as the brakesman shouted,
"Shadyside! Shadyside!"
CHAPTER X
SHADYSIDE SCHOOL
"Isn't it a pretty station!" said Louise Littell.
Betty agreed with her.
The lawn was still green about the gray stone building and the tiles on
the low-hanging roof were moss green, too. The long platform was roofed
over and seemed swarming with girls and boys. Evidently a train had come
in from the other direction a few minutes before the Junction train, for
bags and suitcases and trunks were heaped up outside the baggage room
door and the busses backed up to the edge of the gravel driveway were
partially filled with passengers.
The blue and silver uniforms of the Salsette cadets were much in
evidence, and Betty's first thought was of how nice Bob Henderson would
look in uniform.
"There's our friend!" whispered Tommy Tucker, directing Betty's
attention to the severe-looking elderly woman whom he had so bothered on
the train. "Gee, do you suppose she goes to Shadyside? I thought it was
a girls' School!"
"Oh, do be quiet!" scolded Bobby Littell "Tommy, you've got us in a peck
of trouble--she's one of the teachers!"
"How do you know?" demanded Tommy. "Who told you?"
"Well, if you'd keep still a minute, you'd hear," said the
exasperated Bobby.
Sure enough, a pleasant, fresh-faced woman, hardly more than a girl, was
escorting the gray-haired woman to a waiting touring car.
"You're the last of the staff to come," she said clearly. Mrs. Eustice
was beginning to worry about you. Will you tell her that I'm coming up in
the bus with the girls?"
"All right, you win," admitted Tommy. "Why couldn't she say she was a
teacher instead of acting so blamed exclusive? Anyway, she probably won't
connect you girls with me--all boys look alike to her."
"She has a wonderful memory--like a camera," surmised Bobby gloomily.
"You wait and see."
"Girls, are all of you for Shadyside?" The young woman had come up to
them and now she smiled at the giggling, chattering group with engaging
friendliness. "I thought you were. We take this auto-stage over here.
Give your baggage checks to this porter. I'm Miss Anderson, the physical
instructor."
"Salsette boys this way!" boomed a stentorian voice.
"Good-bye, Betty. See you soon," whispered Bob, giving Betty's hand a
hurried squeeze. "We're only across the lake, you know."
"You chaps, _move_!" directed the voice snappily.
With one accord the group dissolved, the boys hastening to the stage
marked "Salsette" and the girls following Miss Anderson.
There were two stages for the Academy and two for Shadyside, and a
smaller bus which, they afterward learned, followed the route to the
town, which was not on the railroad.
"Betty, darling!"
A pretty girl tumbled down the stage steps and nearly choked Betty with
the fervency of her embrace.
It was Norma Guerin, and Alice was waiting, smiling. Betty was delighted
to meet these old friends, and she introduced them to the Littell girls
and Libbie and Frances in the happy, tangled fashion that such
introductions usually are performed. Names and faces get straightened out
more gradually.
The stage in which they found themselves, for the seven girls insisted on
sitting near each other, was well-filled. They had started and were
lurching along the rather uneven road when Betty found herself staring at
a girl on the other side of the bus.
"Where have I seen her before?" she puzzled. "I wonder--does she look
like some one I know? Oh, I remember! She's the girl we saw on the
train--the one that took Bob's seat!"
Just then a girl sitting up near the driver's seat leaned forward.
"Ada!" she called. "Ada Nansen! Are you the girl they say brought five
trunks and three hat boxes?"
"Well, they're little ones!" said the girl sitting opposite Betty. "I
wanted to bring three wardrobe trunks, but mother thought Mrs. Eustice
might make a fuss."
So the girl's name was Ada Nansen. Betty was sure she remembered their
encounter on the train, if for no other reason than that Ada studiously
refused to meet her eye. Betty was too inexperienced to know that a
certain type of girl never takes a step toward making a new friend
unless she has the worldly standing of that friend first clearly fixed
in her mind.
"What gorgeous furs she has!" whispered Norma Guerin. "Do you know
her, Betty?"
Betty shook her head. Strictly speaking, she did not know Ada. What she
did know of her was not pleasant, and it was part of Betty's personal
creed never to repeat anything unkind if nothing good was to come of it.
"I can tell Bob, 'cause he knows about her," she said to herself. "Won't
he be surprised! I do hope she hasn't brought a huge wardrobe to school
to make Norma and Alice feel bad."
Though both the Guerin girls wore the neatest blouses and suits, any
girl could immediately have told you that their clothes were not new
that season and that the little bag each carried had been oiled and
polished at home.
That Ada Nansen's trunks were worrying Norma, too, her next remark
showed.
"Alice and I have only one trunk between us," she confided to Betty.
"Mother said Mrs. Eustice never allowed the girls to dress much. I made
Alice's party frock and mine, too. They're plain white."
"So's mine," said Betty quickly. "Mrs. Littell wouldn't let her daughters
have elaborate clothes, and the Littells have oceans of money. I don't
believe Ada can wear her fine feathers now she has 'em."
Twenty minutes' ride brought them in sight of the school, and as the bus
turned down the road that led to the lake, many exclamations of pleasure
were heard.
A double row of weeping willows, now bare, of course, bordered the lake,
and the sloping lawns of the school led down to these. The red brick
buildings of the Salsette Academy could be glimpsed on the other shore.
Shadyside consisted of a large brick and limestone building that the
last term pupils in the busses obligingly explained was the
"administration," where classes were taught. The gymnasium was also in
this building. In addition were three gray stone buildings, connected
with bridges, in which were the dormitories, the teachers' rooms, the
dining room, the infirmary, and the kitchens. The administration building
was also connected with the other buildings by a covered passageway
which, they were to discover, was opened only in bad weather. Mrs.
Eustice, the principal, had a theory that girls did not get out into the
fresh air often enough.
The main building possessed a handsome doorway, and here the busses
stopped and discharged their passengers.
"Ada, my dear love!" cried a girl from the bus behind the one in which
Betty and her friends had ridden.
An over-dressed, stout girl advanced upon Ada Nansen and kissed her
affectionately.
"Look quick! That's Ruth Gladys Royal!" whispered Bobby. "I hope they
room together--they'll be a pair. Ada, my dear love!" she mimicked
wickedly. "Libbie, let that be a warning to you--Ruth Gladys Royal is
terribly romantic, too!"
Miss Anderson, smiling and unhurried, marshaled her charges into the
large foyer and announced that they would be assigned to rooms
before luncheon.
"Mrs. Eustice will speak to you in the assembly hall this afternoon,"
said Miss Anderson. "And you will meet her and the teachers for a little
social hour."
Two busy young clerks were at work in the office adjoining the foyer, and
for those who were already provided with a room-mate the task of securing
a room was a matter of only a few moments.
Our girls, with the exception of Louise, had paired off when they had
registered for the term. Bobby Littell and Betty Gordon were, of course,
inseparable. Libbie and Frances, great friends in their home town,
naturally gravitated together, though Betty would have chosen a less
studious room-mate for the dreamy Libbie--she needed a girl who would
know more accurately what she was doing. Norma and Alice Guerin were to
share a room, and Louise felt forlornly out of things when Miss Anderson
came up to her bringing a red-haired, freckle-faced girl with wide gray
eyes and a boyish grin.
"Louise Littell--you are Louise, aren't you?" asked the teacher. "Well,
here's a girl who's come to us from a Western army post. Her name is
Constance Howard, and she doesn't know a single girl. Don't you think
you two might be happy together?"
Constance smiled again, and Louise warmed perceptibly. Louise was the
least friendly of the three Littell girls.
"I'll let you play my ukulele," offered Constance eagerly.
"Let me. She doesn't know a ukulele from a music box," said Bobby, with
sisterly frankness. "Come on, girls, let's go up and see our rooms."
They tramped up the broad staircase and crossed one of the bridges to
find themselves in a delightful, sunny building with corridors carpeted
in softest green. The rooms apparently were all connecting, and the
teacher who met them said the eight friends might have adjoining rooms as
long as "they gave no trouble."
"I'm your corridor teacher, Miss Lacey," she explained.
"Let's be glad she isn't the one we saw on the train," whispered the
irrepressible Bobby, as they all trooped into the first room.
CHAPTER XI
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
It was soon settled that Betty and Bobby were to have the center room in
a suite of three and Libbie and Frances should be on one side of them,
and Louise and Constance Howard on the other. There was a perfectly
appointed bathroom opening off the center room which the six were to
share. Norma and Alice Guerin were given a room that adjoined that
occupied by Libbie and Frances, but nominally, Miss Lacey explained, they
would be considered as a unit in the next suite of three connecting
rooms. Fortunately two very friendly, quiet girls drew the room
immediately next to the Guerin girls.
"But, Betty, listen," whispered Norma Guerin, drawing Betty aside as a
great bumping and banging announced the arrival of the trunks. "Who do
you suppose has the room next to the Bennett sisters? Ada Nansen and Ruth
Gladys Royal!"
"You are in hard luck!" commented Bobby, who had overheard, as she danced
off to open the door to the grinning expressman.
"All the porters are busy!" the man explained.
"So I just told 'em Tim McCarthy wasn't one to stand by and let work go
undone. Where would ye be wantin' these little bags put now?"
He had a trunk on his back that, as Bobby afterward remarked to Betty,
"would have done for an elephant."
"Girls, whose trunk is this?" demanded Bobby.
"Not mine!" came like a well-drilled chorus.
"'Miss Ada Nansen,'" read Betty, examining the card. "Bobby, that's one
of the five!"
They directed the perspiring expressman to the right door and, it is to
be regretted, shamelessly peeped while he toiled up and down bringing the
five trunks and three hat boxes. Then he began on the baggage consigned
to Ruth Gladys Royal, and the watchers counted three trunks.
Betty looked at the Guerin girls and laughed.
"Eight trunks!" she gasped. "They can't get that number in one room.
Not and have any room for the furniture. Norma, do go and see what
you can see."
Norma sped away, and returned as speedily, her eyes blazing.
"What do you think?" she demanded furiously. "They've had some of 'em put
in our room, three I counted, and two in the Bennett girls' room. They're
as mad as hops!"
"The Bennett girls are my friends," declared Bobby Littell sententiously.
"I only hope they're mad enough to hop right down to the office and
explain the state of things."
But the luncheon gong sounded just then, and a laughing, colorful throng
of femininity swept down the broad stairs to the dining room.
"How lovely!" said Betty involuntarily.
There were no long tables in the large, airy room. Instead, round tables
that seated from six to eight, each daintily set and with a slender vase
of flowers in the center of each. Betty and Bobby had the same thought at
the same moment.
"If we could only sit together, all of us!" their eyes telegraphed.
"They're all taking the tables they want and standing by the chairs,"
whispered Betty. "Let's do that."
A table set for eight was close to the door. Betty, Bobby, Louise,
Frances, Libbie, Constance, Norma and Alice gently surrounded this and
stood quietly behind the chairs.
Some one, somewhere, gave a signal, and the roomful was seated as
if by magic.
"I see--those four tables over by the window are for the teachers,"
whispered Betty. "I see Miss Anderson and Miss Lacey, and that
white-haired woman must be the principal. Yes, and girls, there's that
woman whom the boys tormented so on the train!"
Sure enough, there she was, looking even more severe now that her hat
was removed and her sharp features were unrelieved.
"If this isn't fun! I'm sorry for poor Esther at Miss Graham's,"
said Bobby, looking about her with delight. "Mercy, what do you
suppose this is?"
One of the young clerks from the office approached the table, a large
cardboard sheet in her hand.
"I'm filling in the diagram," she explained. "You mustn't change your
seats without permission. Tell me your names, and I'll put you down in
the right spaces."
Betty looked over her shoulder as she wrote down their names. Like the
diagram of the seating space of a theatre, the tables and chairs were
plainly marked. Betty swiftly calculated that between one hundred and
twenty-five and one hundred and fifty girls must be seated in the room.
Later she learned that the total enrollment was one hundred and sixty.
Just outside the dining room was a large bulletin board, impossible to
ignore or overlook. When they came out from luncheon a notice was posted
that Mrs. Eustice would address the school at two o'clock in the assembly
hall in the main building. It was now one-thirty.
"Let's go look at the gym," suggested Bobby. "We have time. Oh, how do
you do?"--this last was apparently jerked out of her.
"I didn't know you were coming to Shadyside, Bobby," said Ruth Gladys
Royal effusively. "Do you know my chum, Ada Nansen? She's from San
Francisco."
"Constance Howard is from the West, too--the Presidio," said Bobby.
Gracefully she introduced the others to Ada and Ruth who surveyed them
indifferently. The Littell girls they knew were wealthy and had a place
in Washington society, but the rest were not yet classified.
"Haven't I seen you before?" Ada languidly questioned Betty. "You're not
the little waitress--Oh, how stupid of me! I was thinking of a girl who
looked enough like you to be your sister."
Bobby bristled indignantly, but Betty struggled with laughter.
"I remember you," she said clearly. "You had the wrong seat on the train
from Oklahoma."
Ada Nansen glanced at her with positive dislike.
"I don't recall," she said icily. "However, I've traveled so much I
daresay many incidents slip my mind. Well, Gladys, let's go in and get
good seats. I want to hear Mrs. Eustice; they say she is a direct
descendant of Richard Carvel."
"We might as well go in, too," said Bobby disconsolately. "She's used up
so much time we couldn't do the gym justice."
Promptly at two o'clock, white-haired Mrs. Eustice mounted the platform
and tapped a little bell for silence.
The principal was a gracious woman of perhaps fifty. Her snow-white hair
was piled high on her head and her dark eyes were bright and keen.
Wonderful eyes they were, seeming to gaze straight into the youthful eyes
that stared back affectionately or curiously as the case might be. Mrs.
Eustice's gown was of black or very dark blue silk, made simply and
fitting exquisitely. Straight, soft collar and cuffs of dotted net
outlined the neck and wrists, and her single ornament was a tiny watch
worn on a black ribbon.
"I wish Ada Nansen would take a good look at her," muttered Bobby.
"I am so glad to welcome you, my girls," began Mrs. Eustice.
Betty thrilled to the magic of that modulated voice, low and yet clear
enough to be heard in every corner of the large room. Surely this lovely
woman could teach them the secret of cultivated, dignified and happy
young womanhood.
The principal spoke to them briefly of her ideals for them, explained the
few rigid rules of the school, and asked that all exercise tact and
patience for the first week during which the rough edges of new
schedules might reasonably be expected to wear off.
"I want to have a little personal talk with each one of you," she
concluded. "Your corridor teachers will consult with me and will tell you
when you are to come to me. And I hope you are to be very, very happy
here with us at Shadyside."
A soft clapping of hands followed this speech, and Mrs. Eustice stepped
down from the platform to be instantly surrounded by the girls who had
spent other terms at the school.
After the older girls had spoken to the principal, the newcomers began to
move forward. They were presented by their corridor teachers, who seemed
to possess a special faculty to remember names, and here and there Mrs.
Eustice recognized a girl through the association of ideas.
As Miss Lacey swept her girls forward, Ada Nansen and Ruth Gladys Royal
happened to head the ranks. Mrs. Eustice put out her hand to Ada, then
gazed down at her in evident astonishment.
CHAPTER XII
THE LOST TREASURE
"Diamonds," whispered Betty to Norma Guerin, who seemed depressed. "She
wears three diamond rings and one sapphire and a square-cut emerald. And
her wrist-watch is platinum set with diamonds."
Mrs. Eustice gazed at the soft little hand she held for a few moments,
then released it. She said nothing.
"Ah, your mother wrote me of you," was the principal's greeting to the
Littell girls. "You look like her, Louise. And Bobby is much like her
father as I remember him."
"This is Betty Gordon," said the loyal Bobby, indicating her chum.
"Mother wrote about her, too, didn't she?"
"Indeed she did," assented Mrs. Eustice warmly. "I must have a special
talk with Betty soon, for she has an ambitious program before her. And
here are Libbie and Frances from the state I remember so affectionately
from girlhood visits there."
But it was Norma and Alice Guerin, sensitive Norma and shy Alice, who
were welcomed most cordially after all.
"So you are Elsie Guerin's daughters!" said the principal, putting an
arm around Norma and holding her hand out to Alice. "My own dear mother
taught your mother when she was a little girl with braids like yours.
And your dear grandmother used to give the most wonderful parties.
People talk about them to this day. It was at her Rose Ball I first met
my husband. You must go up the north road some day and see the old
Macklin house."