CHAPTER VI
MISS CULLAM'S TROUBLE
Ruth and Helen were much more amply supplied with frocks of a somewhatdressy order than when they began a semester at Briarwood Hall. Theirwardrobes here were well filled, and of course there was no supervisionof what they wore as there had been at the preparatory school.
When they went downstairs to the dining-room with Jennie Stone, theyfound they had made no mistake in "putting their best foot forward," asHelen called it.
"My! I feel quite as though I were going to a party," Ruth confessed.
The girls rustled through the corridors and down the wide stairways,laughing and talking, many of the freshmen, it was evident, alreadyhaving made friends.
"There's that girl," whispered Jennie Stone, suddenly.
"What girl?" asked Helen.
"Oh! the girl with all the luggage," laughed Ruth.
"Yes," said the fleshy girl. "What was her name?"
"Rebecca Frayne," said Ruth, who had a good memory.
She bowed to the rather over-dressed freshman. She saw that nobody waswalking with Rebecca Frayne.
"I hope she sits at our table," Ruth added.
"Of course," Helen rejoined, with a smile, "Ruth has already spiedsomebody to be good to."
"Shucks!" said Jennie. "I don't think she'd make a particularly pleasantaddition to our party."
"What does _that_ matter?" demanded Helen, roguishly. "Ruth is alwayspicking up the sore-eyed kittens."
"I think that is unkind," returned Ruth, shaking her head. "Maybe MissFrayne is a very nice girl."
"I wonder what she's got in all those bags and the big trunk?" saidJennie. "I see she's wearing the same dress she traveled in."
"I wager she misses her maid," sighed Helen. "Can't dress without one, Is'pose."
But there were too many other girls to watch and to comment on for thetrio to give much attention to Rebecca Frayne. Ruth, however, said, witha little laugh:
"I must feel some interest in her. Her initials are the same as mine."
"And her arrival certainly took the curse off yours, my dear," Jennieagreed. "Edie Phelps and her crowd were laying for you and no mistake."
"I wonder if we shouldn't eschew all slang now that we have come toArdmore?" Helen suggested demurely.
"You set the example then, my lady!" cried Heavy.
Miss Comstock, the very severe looking senior, sat at the table at whichthe Briarwood trio of freshmen found their numbers; but Miss Frayne wasat the housekeeper's table. There were ten or twelve girls at each tableand throughout the meal a pleasant hum of voices filled the room.
Ruth and Helen, not to mention their fleshy chum, were soon at theirease with their neighbors; nor did Miss Comstock prove such a bugaboo asthey feared. Although the senior was a particularly silent girl, she hada pleasant smile and was no wet blanket upon the enjoyment of thedinner. At least, she did not serve as a wet blanket upon Jennie Stone.The fleshy girl's appetite betrayed the fact that she had been stintedat noon, and that a diet of string beans was scarcely a satisfactoryone.
As they left the dining-room and came out into the wide, well-lightedentrance hall of the house, a lady just entering bowed to Jennie Stone.
"There she is!" groaned the fleshy girl. "Caught in the act!"
"Who is she, Heavy?" demanded Helen, in an undertone.
"She looks nice," observed Ruth.
"Miss Cullam. She's the one that advised the string beans," declaredJennie out of the corner of her mouth. Then she added, most cordially:"Oh! how do you do! These are my two chums from Briarwood--Ruth Fieldingand Helen Cameron. Miss Cullam, girls."
The teacher, who was rather elderly, but very brisk and neat, if notwholly attractive, approached smiling.
"You will meet me in mathematics, young ladies," she said, shaking handswith the two introduced freshmen. "And how are you to-night, Miss Stone?Have you stuck to your vegetable diet, as I advised?"
Heavy made her jolly, round face seem as long as possible, and groanedhollowly.
"Oh, Miss Cullam!" she said, "I believe I could have stuck to the diet,if----"
"Well, if what?" demanded the teacher.
"If the diet would only stick to _me_. But it doesn't. I ate _pecks_ ofstring beans for lunch, and by the middle of the afternoon I felt like acastaway after two weeks upon a desert island."
"Nonsense, Miss Stone!" exclaimed the teacher, yet laughing too. Heavywas so ridiculous that it was impossible not to be amused. "You shouldpractise abstinence. Really, you are the very fattest girl at Ardmore, Ido believe."
"That sounds horrid!" declared Jennie with sudden vigor, and she did notlook pleased.
"You may as well face the truth, my dear," said the mathematics teacher,eyeing the distressing curves of the fleshy girl without prejudice."Here are upwards of a thousand girls--or will be when all have arrivedand registered. And you will be locally famous."
"Oh, don't!" groaned Ruth.
"Poor Heavy!" gasped Helen.
Miss Cullam uttered a short laugh.
"Your friends evidently love you, my dear," she said, patting the fleshygirl's plump cheek. "But you want to make new friends--you wish to beadmired, I know. It will not be pleasant to gain the reputation of beingArdmore's heavyweight, will it?"
"It sounds pretty bad," admitted Heavy, coming out of her momentaryslough of despond. "But we all have our little troubles, don't we, MissCullam?"
Somehow this question seemed to quench the teacher of mathematics' goodspirits. A cloud settled upon her countenance, and she nodded seriously.
"We all have; true enough, Miss Stone," she said. "And I hope you, aspupils at Ardmore, will never suffer such disturbance of mind as I, ateacher, sometimes do."
Ruth, who had started up the stairway next to the teacher, put afriendly hand upon Miss Cullam's arm. "I hope we three will never add toyour burdens, my dear Miss Cullam," she whispered.
The instructor flashed a rather wondering look at the girl of the RedMill; then she smiled. It was a grouty person, indeed, who could lookinto Ruth Fielding's frank countenance and not return her smile.
"Bless you! I have heard of you already, Ruth Fielding. I have no idea Ishall be troubled by you or your friends." They had fallen behind theothers a few steps. "But we never can tell. Since last term--well!"
Much, evidently, was on Miss Cullam's mind; yet she kept step with Ruthwhen they came to the corridor on which the rooms of the threeBriarwoods opened. Ruth could always find something pleasant to say.This woman with the care-graved countenance smiled whimsically as shelistened, keeping at the girl's shoulder.
Evidently somewhat oppressed by the attentions of the instructor, Helenand Heavy had disappeared into the fleshy girl's room.
"Do come in and see how nicely we have fixed our sitting-room--study, Imean, of course," and Ruth laughed, opening the door.
"Looks homelike," confessed Miss Cullam. Then, with a startled glancearound the room, she murmured: "Why, it's the very room!"
"What is that you say?" asked Ruth, curiously.
"Do you know who had this room last year?"
"Of course I haven't the first idea," returned the girl of the Red Mill.
"Miss Rolff."
"Do I know her?" asked Ruth, somewhat puzzled.
"She left before the end of the term. I--I am not sure just what thematter was with her. But she is connected in my mind with a greatmisfortune."
"Indeed, Miss Cullam?" said the sympathetic Ruth.
It was, perhaps, the sympathy in her tone that urged the instructor toconfide her trouble to a strange girl--a freshman, at that!
"I hope I shall never have the same fears and doubts regarding you andyour friends, Miss Fielding, that I have felt about some of these girlswho are now sophomores--and some of the juniors, too."
"Oh, Miss Cullam! What do you mean?"
"Well, I'll tell you, my dear," the teacher said, taking the comfortablechair at Ruth's gestured recommendation, as the girl switched on th
eelectricity. "You seem like an above-the-average sensible girl----"
Ruth laughed at that, but she dimpled, too, and Miss Cullam joined inthe laughter.
"Some of these girls were mere flyaways," she said. "But not many, afterall. Girls who come as far as college, even to the freshman course incollege, usually have something in their pretty noddles besides ideasfor dressing their hair.
"Well, I will confide in you, as I say, because I have a fancy to. Ilike you. Listen to the troubles of a poor mathematics instructor."
"Yes, Miss Cullam," said Ruth, demurely.
"You see, my dear," said Miss Cullam, who had a whimsical way about herthat Ruth had begun to delight in, "after all, we college instructorsare all necessarily of the race of watch dogs."
"Oh, Miss Cullam!"
"Our girls are put upon their honor and are in the main worthy of ourconfidence. But we have experiences that show us how frail human virtueis.
"For instance, there are examinations. A most trying necessity areexaminations. They come mainly toward the close of the college year, anda few of our girls are not prepared to pass.
"Last year I felt that some of my freshmen and sophomores could notpossibly comply with the mathematical requirements. When I received fromthe printers my copies of the questions to be proposed to the classes Ireally felt that a few of my girls were going to have a hard time," andshe smiled again, yet there was still trouble in her eyes.
"I chanced to be in the library when I received the papers. You have notseen our library yet, have you, Miss Fielding?"
"No, Miss Cullam. You know, Helen and I arrived only this afternoon atArdmore."
"That is so. Well, the library is a very beautifully furnished building.It was a gift from certain alumni. I was alone in the reception-roomwhen I examined the papers, and being called suddenly to a duty and notwishing to take the papers with me, I rolled them up and thrust theminto a vase standing upon the table. When I returned in a few minutes,still hurried by a task before me, I found that I had thrust the papersso far into the small-mouthed vase that I could not reach them. Quite aridiculous situation, was it not?
"But now the plot thickens," went on the teacher, with a sigh. "Thepapers were safe enough there, of course. The vase was a very beautifuland valuable silver one, and had its place of honor on that table. Icould not stop to retrieve the question papers with a pair of tongs--asI might, had I not been hurried. When I returned armed with the tongs inthe morning----"
"Yes, Miss Cullam?" rejoined Ruth, interestedly, as the teacher pausedin her story.
"The vase--and, of course, the question papers--was gone," said thelady, in a sepulchral tone.
"Oh!"
"And almost all the girls I had marked for failure in mathematics wentthrough the examination with colors flying!"
"Oh!" exclaimed Ruth again, and quite blankly.
"Do you see the terrible suspicion that has been eating at my mind eversince? There happened to be other unfortunate matters connected with thedisappearance of the vase, too. _It_ has never been found. One of thevery freshmen who I feared would fail in the examination left thecollege under a cloud."
"Oh, Miss Cullam!" gasped Ruth. "Is she suspected of stealing thevase--and the examination papers?"
"I scarcely know what to say in answer to that," said Miss Cullam,gravely. "It seems that one of the sororities was initiating candidateson that night. One of the--er--'stunts,' as they call their ridiculousceremonies, included the filching of this vase after dark and its burialsomewhere on Bliss Island. So Dr. Milroth later informed me.
"The girl chosen for this ridiculous performance, Miss Rolff, whooccupied this very room, was found at daybreak wandering alone upon theisland in a hysterical condition. She insisted upon leaving the collegeimmediately, before I had discovered the absence of the vase and themissing papers.
"I felt that I could not arouse suspicion in Dr. Milroth's mind bymentioning the papers. I secured copies from the printer. Of course, itis all ancient history now, my dear," ended the mathematics teacher,with a sigh. "But you see, suspicion once fastened upon my mind, itstill troubles me."
"But what became of the poor girl?" asked Ruth, sympathetically.
"That I cannot tell you," Miss Cullam said, rising. "She has notreturned this year, and I understand that Dr. Milroth lost trace ofher."