CHAPTER IV.--PLOTS AND PLANS.
Belle Rogers was not always the bewitchingly pretty, dimpling, smilingyoung girl who had endeavored to annex Billie.
And when she was not pretty, Belle's friends liked to keep well out ofher vicinity. At such times two little white dents appeared on each sideof her nose. Her large, china blue eyes were transformed into wells ofsteely gray and the smiling, baby mouth became two narrow white lips.All the color left her cheeks, and people who did not know her wouldexclaim:
"How faded and ill she looks!"
When Belle looked like this she was unusually quiet at first, but it wasthe quiet which comes before a tornado, and it was only when the stormburst that those unfamiliar with her ways realized that Belle had beenvery, very angry.
This is what happened on the day after the exciting experience inBoulder Lane, and all because Wilhelmina Campbell, true to her oldfriends, the "Blue Birds," after being formally invited, had positivelydeclined to join the "Mystic Seven."
"I am sorry," she said, trying her best to be cordial, "but, you see,the others had first claim on me because I have known them a long timeand I have already promised to become a Blue Bird."
"We asked you first," exclaimed Belle, in a preternaturally quiet toneof voice.
"I don't see why that should make any difference," answered Billie,feeling very uncomfortable.
"It makes a great deal of difference," answered Belle, who was alwaysgifted with a flow of words in the moments of her greatest anger. "Youare probably not familiar with the ways of schools and school societies.I understand you have never been to school before."
"Oh, yes, I have. I went to school in Paris for three months and toanother in Dresden for a whole winter."
"This is America," went on Belle, in a slow, even tone, taking no othernotice of the interruption, "and if you decline the honor we have paidyou in the sophomore year, you will not only be blackballed in oursocieties the other two years, but you will not receive any invitationsfrom me and my friends to our parties now or ever, and you will beobliged to associate with the commonest and most ordinary girls in WestHaven. The children of cooks----"
"Mary Price," thought Billie. Mrs. Price had a tea room.
"The daughters of seamen----"
"Nancy!" said Billie out loud. Nancy's father was a sea captain.
"Yes, Nancy Brown," continued Belle, growing angrier every moment. "Youwill simply be an outcast in West Haven, and I advise you to think thematter over well before you decide to join that low, common crowd, for Iassure you it will be the last of you with us----"
Billie was so aghast at the insolence of the spoiled girl that she didnot attempt to interrupt the rush of words which seemed to flow from herlips without any effort whatever. She was very angry herself, as amatter of fact, but with the self-control she had learned from herfather, she determined to hold her peace until Belle had run down, asshe expressed it later to the other girls.
At last there came a pause, and Billie, who had been sitting on thewindow ledge in the gymnasium swinging her feet and thinking of what shewas going to say when she was entirely prepared to speak, slipped downto the floor and stood before the enraged girl like a brave soldier inthe face of battle.
But this was all she said, for Billie was really very much like a boy.
"I don't think it is any honor to join your club, or go with you andyour friends. I wouldn't give up Mary and Nancy and Elinor for twentyMystic Sevens. I'd rather go to boarding school any day, and that'sabout the worst fate that could happen to me."
Then she turned on her heel and walked away, leaving Belle in the gripof a tempest of sobs and tears. Such rages are quite like the WestIndian storms which sweep up the coast with a great blowing of wind andthen, after a tremendous roar of thunder, the downpour follows.
That night in her pretty chintz-hung bedroom in the beautiful Rogershouse, which was one of the show places of West Haven, Belle Rogersplanned her revenge. Her temples were throbbing and her whole body achedwith exhaustion. Tempers are really quite as devastating to the systemas the West Indian tornadoes are to the country over which they sweep.
"I'll get even with that rough tom-boy," she said out loud. "I'll payher back if it takes all winter to do it. I'll make her sorry she evercame to West Haven, and I'll make the others pay, too. They'll see whatit means to interfere with me and my plans. Perhaps papa will give me amotor car, only I'm afraid of the things, and I never could run one. Myhands are much too small and delicate to handle machinery."
"Belle, darling, do you feel any better?" asked Mrs. Rogers, anxiously,outside the door.
Belle made no reply. It was her custom to pretend to be asleep when shewished to be alone, and she wished now to spend a long uninterruptedevening to herself, for her thoughts were very busy. A plan had comeinto her head. It had sprung up suddenly, full-grown, as if it had beensecretly hatching in the bottom of her mind for a long time and nowappeared a matured scheme.
Her blood tingled at the notion. It was such an audacious, daring thingthat the very thought made her dizzy.
"I'll do it," she said at last, her mind made up. "I'll do it, and I'llget only one person to help me, because it will take two to work it.Now, who shall that person be? It would be best to ask a Blue Bird, butwhich one?"
Her thoughts ran over the girls in the despised society, but there wasonly one of the ten whom she would quite dare to approach. The otherswere fiercely loyal to each other.
This possible traitor was a new girl in West Haven. Her name wasFrancesca Alta, but her friends called her Fannie. She was the daughterof Mme. Alta, a music teacher lately established in the town. Many ofthe girls were taking music lessons of Mme. Alta, and Belle, who was oneof her pupils, often had opportunities of speaking to the littledark-haired daughter, although she had only nodded to her coldly so far.
"I will speak to her to-morrow," she exclaimed, as she swallowed thesleeping powder her indulgent mother always gave her after one of theseviolent headaches.
In the morning Belle had regained her baby smile. The red had left hernose and was now in its proper spots on her round, plump cheeks. Oncemore her large blue eyes looked appealingly into the eyes of those shehonored with her glances. Belle never saw what she preferred to ignore,and one of the most delightful sights of that bright September morningwas a red motor car filled with pretty young girls, which whirled intothe High School grounds, making a bright splash of scarlet against theold gray walls of the building.
Belle did not see the "Comet" and its load, or would not see it, butlater, Billie, who never bore malice, bowed a cheerful good morning toher enemy, and, to the surprise of the others, received a cordial bow inreturn.
"I am sorry I was cross to you yesterday, Miss Campbell. Will youforgive me?" Belle asked her.
"Yes, indeed," answered the warm-hearted young girl. "It's awfully niceof you to admit it," and she secretly decided that the others wererather hard on Belle Rogers, after all.
However, when the girls heard of the apology, they were skeptical.
"It's the 'Comet' that won her over," observed Nancy.
"I don't believe it," answered their new, inseparable friend, who aftertwo days' association was as intimate with the three girls as if she hadknown them always, so rapidly do young girl intimacies grow.
"Something does seem to have happened to her," said Mary Price. "Perhapsyou gave her such a dressing-down, Billie, that she's turned over a newleaf. She would never have stooped to talk to Fannie Alta before, butshe is doing it now, and look--will wonders never cease?"
The two girls were indeed in intimate conversation. They were walkingarm in arm up and down the campus, nibbling sandwiches. At West HavenHigh School the girls either brought their luncheons with them to eat atrecess or bought sandwiches of that plucky, hard-working little woman,Mrs. Price, Mary's mother, who made the sandwiches and brought them tothe school herself in a big basket.
That is why Mary Price had exclaimed, "Will wonders never cease?"
Shehad recognized the package of sandwiches in oil paper, which BelleRogers must have bought from her mother, and which she was now sharingwith dark, shabby little Fannie Alta.
"She used to say she would rather starve than eat one of mother'slettuce sandwiches," Mary exclaimed, "but she appears even to have cometo that."
"If this is one of your mother's own, it's very delicious," exclaimedBillie, gallantly turning the conversation into other channels. Afterall, it was just as well not to form the habit of discussing Belle toomuch. Her father had never approved of criticising people.
"It doesn't lead to anything but bilious headaches," he used to say."Sick, bilious headaches and a very yellow complexion. Critical peoplealways look like that, Billie, my girl."
Billie's complexion was clear and healthy. She had never had a biliousheadache in her life. But, then, she was not given to picking flaws inother people's characters.
However, the novelty of the richest and proudest girl in West Havenmaking friends with a poor music teacher's daughter was soon to beeclipsed by a much more sensational and mysterious incident.
That afternoon, after school, when the four friends assembled in thecarriage shed for their usual spin home in Billie's motor car, theyfound a note stuck conspicuously between the cushion and the back of theseat. It was addressed in a large angular hand to "Miss WilhelminaCampbell and her friends, both boys and girls, especially Miss Butler,"and inside it read:
"Keep quiet about Boulder Lane. You are watched and if you let a wordslip out, the punishment will come quickly."
"How ridiculous," exclaimed Billie angrily, when she had shown the noteto the others. "I have a great mind to write papa all about it, only itwould worry him to death. It is only cowards who write anonymousletters, anyhow."
But she did not write to her father, and the other girls, too, weresilent on the matter.
They wondered many times who had put the note on the seat. Strangerswere not unusual in West Haven, where sailors and seamen often cameashore, but the Girls' High School was at the other end of town andvisitors ashore seldom strayed so far away from the shops and the littletheatre.
"I'd like to know what their grudge is against the Butler family,"Elinor had demanded, but no one could answer the question, and she wasstill determined not to disturb her highly excitable father.