The Littell car carried the twelve to the station soon after breakfast, and though Shadyside and Salsette, unlike many of the large northern schools, ran no “special,” the few passengers who were not school bound found themselves decidedly in the minority on the “9:36 local” that morning.
“Remember, Betty, you and Bob are to spend the holidays with us,” said Mrs. Littell, as she kissed her good-bye. “If your uncle comes down from Canada, he must come, too.”
“All aboard!” shouted the conductor, who foresaw a lively trip. “No’m, you can’t go through the gate—nobody can.”
The crowd of fathers and mothers and younger brothers and sisters pressed close to the iron grating as the train got under way. On the back platform the Tucker twins raised their voices in a school yell that would have horrified the dignified heads of the Academy had they been there to hear it.
CHAPTER IX
ADJUSTER TOMMY
“I’m Salsette born!” trilled Tommy Tucker soulfully.
“And Salsette bred!” chimed in his brother.
“And when I die—” caroled Tommy.
“I’ll be Salsette dead!” they finished together.
Then, highly satisfied with this intelligible ditty, they burst into the car where the others were waiting for them.
The boys had appropriated the seats at the forward end of the car, and unfortunately their selection included a seat in which an elderly, or so she seemed to them, woman sat. She fidgeted incessantly, folding and unfolding her long traveling coat, opening and closing a fitted lunch basket, and arranging and re-arranging several small unwieldy parcels and heavy books that slid persistently to the floor with the jarring of the train. When the conductor came through for tickets, she discovered that she had mislaid hers and it was necessary to flutter the pages of every book before the missing bit of pasteboard finally dropped from between the leaves of the last one opened.
Bob, with instinctive courtesy, had offered to help her search, but she had rebuffed him sharply.
“I don’t want any boy pawing over my belongings,” she informed him tartly.
Bob flushed a little, it was impossible not to help it, but he said nothing. Meeting Betty’s indignant eyes, he smiled good-humoredly.
“Sweet pickles!” ejaculated Tommy Tucker indignantly. “Here, you Timothy, hand me that suitcase at your feet—it belongs to the little dark girl.”
Libbie, “the little dark girl,” smiled dreamily as Timothy passed her suitcase to Tommy. She and Timothy Derby, ignoring the jeers of their friends, were deep in two white and gold volumes of poetry. Timothy, Libbie had discovered, had a leaning toward the romantic in fiction, though he preferred his served in rhyme.
The wicked Tommy had a motive in asking for Libbie’s suitcase. It was much smaller and lighter than any of the others, and he swung it deftly into the rack over the vinegary lady’s unsuspecting head. With a deftness, born it must be confessed of previous practice, he balanced the case on the rim so that the first lurch of the train catapulted the thing down squarely on the woman’s hat, snapping a shiny, hard black quill in two.
“I must say!” she sputtered, rising angrily. “Who put that up there? If anything goes in that rack, it will be some of my things. I paid for this seat.”
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.
“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 o
f 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.
The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 229
