CHAPTER X.--RUMORS AT SCHOOL.
West Haven High School, Miss Gray, the Principal, had often said, hadall the merits of a public and private school combined. It was morethorough than a private school and the teachers were more in touch withthe pupils than is usual at a public school. Miss Gray herself wasdeeply interested in the welfare of her girls and studied carefully theability and temperament of each one.
When, therefore, a strange and very terrible complaint was made to herone morning about one of her school girls, she was too shocked to reasonintelligently about it, and ended by dismissing the complainants quietlyfrom her private office until she sent for them again.
Exactly what the complaint was no one knew except those who had made it.It was kept a careful secret. But in school rumors arise in the mostsubtle way. They are whispered about behind doors at recess; written onthe margins of text books in class and hastily rubbed out; vaguelyhinted at here and there until they spread from room to room and classto class and gradually the whole school is bursting with the news. Andthe poor victim may all this time be entirely unconscious that she isthe very centre of a seething, boiling pot of gossip.
This is how the present rumor started in West Haven High School:
One afternoon when the last gong had sounded the sophomore classgathered in the locker room to put on their coats and hats. The lockerswere only so in name. There had never been any keys to them, becausethere had never been any need to keep belongings under lock and key inWest Haven High School, where most of the pupils had known each otherall their lives.
On this particular afternoon, every incident of which our four friendswill remember as long as they live, Nancy was prinking at the glass, asusual; Elinor and Billie, with their heads bent over an automobile map,were making plans for a motor trip, and Mary Price was studying herLatin for the next day. It was that lingering, lazy time after school isover, which all school girls know.
Fannie Alta hurried into the room and flung open the door of her locker,next to that of Belle Rogers, who was at that moment engaged in lookingat herself in her own private mirror, hung on the inside of her lockerdoor.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" exclaimed Fannie Alta, with a very excited andstrange manner. "I have lost something. Something which my mamma gave meto keep for her. What shall I do? What shall I do?"
"Why, what was it, Fannie?" asked the other girls, gathering around hersympathetically. "Let us help you find it."
"Oh, oh, it is terrible!" cried the young Spanish girl, wringing herhands and weeping in her handkerchief alternately. "What shall I do?What shall I do?"
"Was it money you lost?" asked Billie, in her usual rather abruptmanner.
"Yes, yes; how did you know?"
"I didn't know, I guessed," answered Billie.
"Did you leave it in your locker?" some one else asked.
"Yes, yes. I left it there at noon to-day. Twenty dollars my mamma gaveto me to keep for her. Oh, is it not terrible? She will eat me with heranger."
Billie could hardly keep the corners of her mouth from curving with anirrepressible smile when she remembered those two front tusks of Mme.Alta's, which seemed to be uncovered, ready for work at any moment.
"Are you sure it is not there still?" asked Elinor quietly. "I happenedto look up when you came into the room. You simply flung open yourlocker door and then began to cry. Why don't you look in your pocketsbefore you decide that you have lost the money?"
Fannie flashed an angry glance at Elinor.
"How did you know that I had not looked before; that I have not lookedtwice, many times?"
"I didn't," answered Elinor. "Have you?"
Fannie did not reply and from that moment she and Elinor disliked eachother intensely.
Then the girls began looking carefully about the room.
"I feel as if I had it hidden about me," said Nancy, giggling, as shehelped in the search.
The others laughed, too, which somewhat relieved the situation. Nothingis more uncomfortable than for money to be lost mysteriously in acompany of people.
"We do look as guilty as the forty thieves," ejaculated Rosomond McLane,a fat, funny girl, who was popular with the whole class.
No one was more active in the search than Belle Rogers. She shookFannie's text books violently and scattered the papers about, toFannie's intense annoyance. She felt in Fannie's pockets, examined thelining of her hat, and made herself so officious and numerous thatFannie herself exclaimed with much irritation:
"Please do not, Belle. You know it is not there."
Only Elinor sat quietly on the window sill watching the search, withjust the faintest shadow of scornful incredulity on her handsome face.
"Elinor Butler, do you believe I have been telling a falsehood?" Fanniefinally exclaimed in exasperation.
"What a little spitfire you are, Fannie," answered Elinor. "Just becauseI don't choose to grovel on the floor looking for your money. I can helpyou quite as much by thinking, and I am thinking very hard, I can assureyou."
At last the search was abandoned. The pocketbook containing the moneycould not be found, and the young girls, swinging their bookstraps,--bags were too childish for High School girls,--strolled up thestreet in groups discussing the strange disappearance of Fannie's twentydollars.
In the meantime, the Motor Maids, laughing and talking together, tossedtheir books into the red car and then climbed in themselves. Somehow,Fannie's loss did not seem very real. Billie had cranked up the machineand was about to back out when Fannie's voice called from the lockerroom:
"Wait! Stop!"
"Well, you see we haven't gone yet," answered Elinor severely.
"Elinor, you are so hard on Fannie Alta. I'm sorry for her," said Mary."Mother wouldn't bite me if I lost twenty dollars, but I'd hate to loseit just the same."
"I didn't mean to be hard on her," answered Elinor, "but my instinctstell me not to trust her."
"When did they tell you, Elinor?" laughed Billie.
Elinor's instincts were a great joke to her three devoted friends. Butthe appearance of Fannie running breathlessly, with Belle following at adignified pace, interrupted Elinor's invariable reply to jests about herinstincts: "You know they are never wrong."
"What is the matter now, Fannie?" asked Billie, who was standing in thefront of her car, her arms folded, like a captain on the hurricane deckof his ship.
"Get out of the road," cried Billie, backing recklesslyout of the shed and whizzing out of the gate at full speed.]
"Would you mind----" Fannie stammered. "I mean--I think I have a rightto ask--I want you to look in your pockets. I believe----" shecontinued, getting bolder every moment. "I am sure that one of you willfind my pocketbook----"
Billie's frank, candid face flushed as scarlet as her motor car, whilethe color left Elinor's cheeks as white as death. Nancy gave a littlefrightened giggle, and Mary Price neither flushed nor turned white, butlooked quietly on.
"Really, Fannie," spoke Elinor, "you are not in the lawless SouthAmerican country you came from, whatever it is. You are among decentpeople, not thieves, and perhaps you had better remember that hereafter.Start on, Billie," she commanded, sitting as erect as a queen at her owncoronation.
"But I insist!" screamed Fannie.
"She has a right," put in Belle.
"Get out of the road," cried Billie, backing recklessly out of the shed,turning with a wide, flourishing curve and whizzing out of the gate atfull speed.
"Well, of all the insolence," cried Elinor. "What does she mean and howdoes she dare----" her voice choked with indignation.
"Don't you think it was Belle Rogers who put her up to it out ofrevenge?" suggested Mary.
"If it was, I can't see what she had to gain by it," said Billie."Elinor sailed into them and we nearly sailed over them. It seems to mewe had a good deal the best of it."
Billie dropped the girls at their homes, as she was in the habit ofdoing every afternoon after school, and whirled up Cliff Street to theold Campbell hom
estead. On the way she passed Belle Rogers, who alsolived in that fashionable section, but she did not ask her to get in andride up the hill. Billie had a frank, open nature, but with her wholesoul she distrusted that pink and white doll-baby face and thoseinnocent china blue eyes.
In the meantime Mary had taken off her rather threadbare little jacketand hung it in the closet. Her mother was resting on the couch. Shelooked pale and tired that day, and Mary walked softly so as not todisturb her. Slipping off her mittens, she thrust them into her coatpocket. Her fingers encountered something and she pulled out a flat,foreign-looking pocketbook. Mary's face turned white and she leanedagainst the wall of the closet and closed her eyes.
"They must have put it in my pocket," she whispered. "What shall I do?"
"Mary, dearest," called her mother.
"Yes, mother," she answered, quietly slipping the purse into the pocketagain. "I won't tell her now," she thought. "She is worried enoughalready." And when presently she kissed her mother, no one could havetold that the young girl was more frightened than she had ever been inall her lifetime.
The next morning Mary hurried to school without waiting for Billie andher car. She had something to study, she said. But Fannie was therebefore her, waiting in the locker room. Mary tried to calm her beatingheart as she looked steadily at the other girl. Then, with a suddenresolution, she marched straight up to Fannie, and thrust the pocketbookinto her hand.
"You put this in my pocket," she said. "I don't know what you haveagainst me, or what I ever did to you, but if you ever do it again, Ishall go straight to Miss Gray."
Fannie took the pocketbook without a word, and after that a verydifferent version of the story got out. Finally it reached Miss Gray'sears.
But the most serious thing of all was that things began disappearingevery day out of the girls' lockers.