CHAPTER XIV
AT MRS. SADOC SMITH'S
Mrs Tellingham, wise in the ways of girls, had foreseen the excitement anddisturbance in the placid current of Briarwood life, and made plansfollowing the fire to counteract the evil influences of just thisdisturbance. The girls who hoped to graduate from the school in the comingJune must have more quiet--must have time to study and to think.
The younger girls, if they fell behind in their work, could make it up inthe coming terms. Not so Ruth Fielding and her friends, so the wise schoolprincipal had distributed them, after the destruction of the WestDormitory, in such manner that they would be free from the hurly-burly ofthe general school life.
A few, like Mercy Curtis (who could not easily walk back and forth fromany outside lodging), Mrs. Tellingham kept in her own apartment. But thegreater number of the graduating class was distributed among neighborswho--in most cases--were not averse to accepting good pay for rooms whichcould only be let to summer boarders and were, at this time of year, neveroccupied.
The Briarwood Hall preceptress allowed her girls to go only where shecould trust the land-ladies to have some oversight over their lodgers. Andthe girls themselves were bound in honor to obey the rules of the school,whether on the Briarwood premises or not.
Visiting among the outside scholars was forbidden, and the girls studyingfor graduation had their hours more to themselves than they would have hadin the school.
Special chums were able to keep together in most instances. Ruth, Helenand Ann Hicks went to live at Mrs. Sadoc Smith's; and there was room inthe huge front room on the second floor of her rambling old house, forMercy, too, had it been wise for the lame girl to lodge so far from theschool.
Mrs. Smith got the girls up in season in the morning to reach the dininghall at Briarwood by breakfast-time; and she saw to it, likewise, thattheir light went out at ten o'clock in the evening. These were herinstructions from Mrs. Tellingham, and Mrs. Sadoc Smith was rather a grimperson, who did her duty and obeyed the law.
There being an extra couch, Ruth persuaded her friends to agree to thecoming of a fourth girl into the lodging. And this fourth girl, oddlyenough, was not one of the graduating class, or even one of the girlswhom they had chummed with before.
It was the new girl, Amy Gregg! Amy Gregg, whom nobody seemed to want, andwho seemed to be the loneliest figure and the most sullen girl who hadever come to Briarwood Hall!
"Of course, you'd pick up some sore-eyed kitten," complained Ann Hicks."That child has a fully-developed grouch against the whole world, I verilybelieve. What do you want her for, Ruthie?"
"I don't want her," said Ruth promptly.
"Well! of all the girls!" gasped Helen. "Then _why_ ask Mrs. Tellingham tolet her come here?"
"Because she ought to be with somebody who will look out for her," Ruthsaid.
She did not tell her mates about it, but Ruth had heard some whispersregarding the origin of the fire that had burned down the West Dormitory,and she was afraid Amy would be suspected.
The older girl had reason to know that Mrs. Tellingham had questioned Amyregarding the candle she had obtained from Miss Scrimp's store. The girlhad emphatically denied having left the candle burning on leaving her roomto go to supper on the fatal evening.
The girls had begun, after a time, to ask questions about the origin ofthe fire. They knew it had started on the side of the corridor where AmyGregg had roomed. They might soon suspect the truth.
"If they do, good-bye to all little Gregg's peace of mind!" Ruth thought,for she knew just how cruel girls can be, and Amy did not readily makefriends.
Although Ruth and her room-mates tried to make the flaxen-haired girl feelat home at Mrs. Sadoc Smith's, Amy remained sullen, and seemed afraid ofthe older girls. She was particularly unpopular, too, because she was theonly girl who had refused to write home to tell of the fire and ask for acontribution to the dormitory fund.
Amy Gregg seemed to be afraid to talk of the fire and refused to give evena dollar toward the rebuilding of the dormitory. "It isn't _my_ fault thatthe old thing burned down. I lost all my clothes and books," sheannounced. "I think the school ought to pay _me_ some money, instead."
After saying this before her room-mates at Mrs. Smith's, all but Ruthdropped her.
"Sullen little thing," said Helen, with disgust.
"Not worth bothering with," rejoined Ann.
The only person to whom Amy Gregg seemed to take a fancy was Mrs. Smith'sscapegrace grandson, Henry. Henry was the wildest boy there was anywhereabout Briarwood Hall. He was always getting into trouble, and hisgrandmother was forever chastising him in one way or another.
Nobody in the neighborhood knew him as "Henry." He was called "that Smithboy" by the grown folk; by his mates he was known as "Curly."
Ruth felt that Curly never would have developed into such a mischievousand wayward youth had it not been for his grandmother.
When a little boy Henry had come to live with Mrs. Sadoc Smith. Mrs. Smithdid not like boys and she kept Henry in kilts until he was of an age whenmost lads are looking forward to long trousers. She made him wearFauntleroy suits and kept his hair in curls down his back--molassescolored curls that disgusted the boy mightily. Finally he hired anotherboy for ten cents and a glass agate to cut the curls off close to hishead, and he stole a pair of long trousers, a world too wide for him, froma neighbor's line. He then set out on his travels, going in an emptyfreight car from the Lumberton railroad yards.
But he was caught and brought back, literally "by the scruff of his neck;"and his grandmother was never ending in her talk about the escapade. Thecurls remained short, however. If she refused to give Curly twenty centsoccasionally to have his hair cut, he would stick burrs or molasses taffyin the hair so that it had to be kept short.
There seemed an affinity between this scapegrace lad and Amy Gregg. Notthat she possessed any abundance of spirit; but she would listen to Curlyromance about his adventures by the hour, and he could safely confide allhis secrets to Amy Gregg. Wild horses would not have drawn a word from heras to his intentions, or what mischief he had already done.
Curly was a tall, thin boy of fifteen, wiry and strong, and with a face assmooth and pink-and-white as a girl's. That he was so girlish looking wasa sore subject with the boy, and whenever any unwise boy called him"Girly" instead of "Curly" it started a fight, there and then.
Henry was forbidden by his grandmother to bother the girls from BriarwoodHall in any way, and to make sure that he played no tricks upon them, whenRuth and her mates came to the house to lodge, Mrs. Smith housed Curly ina little, steep-roofed room over the summer kitchen.
It was a cold and uncomfortable place, he told Amy Gregg. Ruth heard himtell her so, but judged that it would not be wise to beg Mrs. Smith forother quarters for her grandson. She was not a woman to whom one couldeasily give advice--especially one of Ruth's age and inexperience.
Mrs. Smith was a very grim looking woman with a false front of little,corkscrew curls, the color of which did not at all match the iron-gray ofher hair. That the curls were made of Mrs. Smith's own hair, cropped fromher head many years before, there could be no doubt. It Nature had erredin turning her actual hair to iron-gray in these, her later years, thatwas Nature's fault, not Mrs. Smith's!
She grimly ignored the parti-colored hair as she did the naturalexuberance of her grandson's spirit. If Nature had given him anunquenchable amount of mirth and jollity, that, too, was Nature's fault.Still, Mrs. Sadoc Smith proposed to quell that mirth and suppress the joyof Curly's nature if possible.
The only question was: In the process of making Curly over to fit herideas of what a boy should be, was not Mrs. Smith running a grave chanceof ruining the boy entirely?
And what boy, living in a house with four girls, could keep from trying toplay tricks upon them? If the shed-chamber had been a mile away over theroofs of the Smith house, Curly would have been tempted to creep over theshingles to one of the windows of the big front room, and----
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Nine o'clock at night. All four of the girls quartered with Mrs. Smithwere busy with their books--even flaxen-haired Amy Gregg. The rustle ofturning leaves and a sigh of weariness now and then was all that hadbroken the silence for half an hour.
Outside, the wind moaned in the trees. It was cold and the sky wasovercast with the promise of a stormy morrow. Suddenly Helen started andglanced hastily at the window behind her, where the shade was drawn.
"What's that?" she whispered.
"Huh?" said Ann.
"I didn't hear anything," Ruth added.
Not a word from Amy Gregg, who likewise appeared to be deeply immersed inher book.
Another silence; then both Ruth and Helen jumped. "I declare! Is that abird or a beast?" Helen demanded.
"What is it?" cried Ann, starting up.
"Somebody rapping on that window," Ruth declared.
"This far up from the ground? Nonsense!" exclaimed the bold Ann, andmarched to the casement and ran up the shade.
They could see nothing. There was no light in the roadway before thehouse. Ann opened the window and leaned out.
"Nobody down there throwing up gravel, that's sure," she declared, drawingin her head again, and shutting the window.
Just as they returned to their books the scratching, squeaking noise brokeout again. This time Ruth ran to see.
"Nothing!" she confessed.
"What do you suppose it can be?" asked Helen nervously. "I declare, Ican't study any more. That gets on my nerves."
Mrs. Smith put in her head at that moment. "Of course you haven't seenthat boy, any of you?" she asked sharply.
The three older girls looked at each other; Amy Gregg continued to poreover her book. No; Ruth, Helen and Ann could honestly tell Mrs. Smith thatthey had not seen Curly.
"Well, the young rascal has slipped out. I went up to his door to take himsome clothes I had mended, and he didn't answer. So I opened the door, andhis bed hasn't been touched, and he went up an hour ago. He's slipped outover the shed roof, for his window's open; though I don't see how he dareddrop to the ground. It's twenty feet if it's an inch," Mrs. Smith saidsternly.
"I shall wait up for him and catch him when he comes back. I'll learn himto go out nights without me knowin' of it."
She went away, stepping wrathfully. "Goodness! I'm sorry for that boy,"said Ann, beginning leisurely to prepare for bed.
But Ruth watched Amy Gregg curiously. She saw the smaller girl flush andpale and glance now and then toward the window. Ruth jumped to a suddenconclusion. Curly was somewhere outside that window on the roof!