During the dark days when Marjory and Sallie were under a cloud of suspicion; when Henrietta was worried and unhappy about her much loved and missing father and when Maude was again in disgrace with Miss Woodruff, it was natural that this little group of warm friends should spend the leisure moments of the long afternoons together. And of course Cora, Jane Pool, Jean, Mabel and Bettie, always loyal, no matter what happened, stayed with them. But, in spite of the fact that these were the unhappiest days that these particular girls had ever spent, they were not without some brighter moments. And Maude Wilder, you may be sure, managed to provide some of the brightest.
On one of these afternoons, Maude found it necessary to explain to Sallie (who slept on the upper floor and had therefore missed the fun) the cause of her present disgrace.
“Of course I ought not to have done it,” said Maude. “But you know they took us to the movies Saturday afternoon to see ‘Treasure Island.’”
“Yes,” said Sallie. “I had to stay home to clean the silver—Annie had a sore finger.”
“And you know how sad we all were over the hymns Sunday night?”
“We always are,” returned Sallie.
“Well, when we were all trailing sadly up the front stairs to bed, afterwards, I had a lovely idea. I thought it would be fun to dress up just like one of those lovely ‘Treasure Island’ pirates so I did it—bloomers, sash, black eyebrows, whiskers, black hat with sweeping plume and everything. I was a bold buccaneer all right, wasn’t I, girls?”
“Yes,” assured Cora, “she looked the part, provided you didn’t examine her too closely.”
“Of course, after I was all fixed up, I wanted other folks to enjoy the fun too; so I started out in this corridor. I had a lovely time. I poked my head in at one door after another and growled in a deep bass voice:
“‘Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!’
“Of course Isabelle shrieked and Augusta screamed and Lillian yelped like a puppy and Marjory squealed; and altogether this corridor was full of lovely noises when I slipped out of it. I got across the square hall all right and into the North Corridor. I had a lovely time there, too. Victoria just laughed, but Gladys gasped like a fish and pretended to faint and the Miller girls fell into each other’s arms and bleated. It was just heavenly. And then suddenly it was all over. The bell rang for ‘Lights Out,’ and there was I at the far end of the North Corridor. All that long way from my own room.”
“What did you do?” asked Sallie.
“Well, you know a swarthy pirate doesn’t light up very well in the dark; so, knowing that I was no longer a fearsome sight, I started to sneak back to my own room. I started all right, but just then Mrs. Henry’s door opened and Miss Woodruff came out. I’d have been all right even then, but as luck would have it, the hairbrush that I had thrust into my manly belt dropped with a horrid clatter on the hardwood floor.
“But I was right near the vacant room at the end of the North Corridor. The door was open and I slipped in. And slid under the bed. And, my goodness! You could hear my heart beat all over the place; and you know what ears our dear Miss Woodruff has.
“What did she do but come into that room and sit on the very bed I was under and listen. It was awful. She sat and sat and sat and listened. And I knew that Mrs. Henry was standing just outside her own door listening too. I didn’t dare breathe, but my heart kept right on thumping like a brass knocker on a front door. It was moonlight outside, the shade was up part way and she was sitting on the side next the window. Her skirt was pulled up a little way at the back so I could see her thick ankles very plainly and a little of her fatted calf above them.
“Girls, I just couldn’t help it. I had to pinch her leg. I had to do it. I know it was crazy. I know it was the very last thing I should have done; but my thumb and finger went right out and did it.
“She let out the grandest shriek you ever did hear, and streaked out of there as if a whole regiment of pirates were at her heels. Mrs. Henry switched on all the lights and came on a run; and all the North Corridor girls popped out of their rooms and Miss Woodruff came back. And there was I, a crushed and humiliated pirate, crawling out on all fours; but Miss Woodruff looked so funny that I just looked up at her and said as sadly as I could: ‘Nous avons les raisins blancs et noirs mais pas de cerises.’ And of course all the North Corridor girls roared. I knew they would.”
“What did she do to you?” asked Sallie, when the girls’ shrieks of mirth had finally subsided. They loved Maude’s tales of her own dreadful doings quite as well as Maude loved to tell them.
“She said I was a bad influence to you younger girls—”
“You’re not,” said Henrietta. “Not one of us would attempt to follow in your wild footsteps. We wouldn’t dare.”
“And she said that I ought not to give way to my wicked impulses—”
“They’re, not really wicked,” said Jean. “At least you never do anything sneaky and you always tell the truth.”
“And,” finished Maude, “I’m perfectly incorrigible and I shall never grow up to be a lady.”
“I think you will,” laughed Henrietta. “The good die young, you know.”
“Didn’t she punish you?” asked Sallie.
“Didn’t she?” returned Maude. “I have to learn and recite a whole Chapter of American History. Prose, mind you. And she picked out the very dullest chapter in the whole book.”
“I’ll say this for Miss Woodruff,” laughed Henrietta. “Sometimes she shows remarkable ingenuity in her punishments. That one will keep Maude out of mischief for some time.”
“I wanted dreadfully to go to that movie,” confessed Sallie. “I read that book last vacation and I loved it. But Mrs. Rhodes keeps finding more and more things for me to do Saturdays and I just can’t get through in time to go any place.”
“Tell us about your own people,” pleaded Jean. “You know you always promised to.”
“Yes,” begged Bettie, “begin way back at the very beginning and tell us how it all happened. Perhaps our friend Mr. Black might tell us what to do in a case like that—we write to him every week you know. He might know how to find some of your lost people.”
“I’m sure it’s too late to do any good,” said Sallie, soberly. “But I’ll tell you about it. To begin with, I was about nine years old when my mother died. We were living then in a little bit of a town in Wisconsin. We had always moved about a great deal. You see, my father was always trying new things and new places—he used to say that he was a rolling stone; and then my mother would say: ‘Never mind, John, you’ll roll to the right spot some day.’
“Well, after my mother was gone, we went to Chicago and lived for a little while in a big apartment house. The only person that we knew very well was an old man that everybody called ‘Grandpa’ but he wasn’t really my grandfather—or anybody’s that I know of. He had a couple of rooms next to ours. I think he must have done some sort of writing for a living—copying perhaps—but I’m not very sure about that part of it. Anyway, he used to carry written papers away in an old black portfolio and come home with it empty. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was bent over his desk writing. He was very absent minded—always hunting for his spectacles when they were on top of his head and often putting his teakettle on to boil and letting it go dry. Father used to remind him to put his coat on when he was going out.
“I suppose my father found me a good deal of a nuisance daytimes. Perhaps he was more tied down than he liked to be and there were no relatives to look after me. I know that my mother’s people were dead and my father said once that he had nobody in the world but me.
“Anyway, he decided to put me into a girls’ school. He picked one out, bought me some clothes and a small trunk and told me that I must keep my new things nice and clean, because, in just about a week, I was going on the cars to a good school for little girls, where there would be lots of good women to take care of me while he was away at work.”
Sallie’s face wore a strange but very sweet expression while she was telling her story. The girls gazed at her sympathetically and listened intently. There was not a sound in the room but Sallie’s gentle voice.
“The very next day,” Sallie continued, “my father was taken sick. I don’t know what ailed him, but he was very sick. He gave Grandpa some money and asked him to take me to that school when the time came and Grandpa promised to do it. Of course I didn’t want to go when Father was so sick; but Grandpa said I must be good and not worry my father, so I had to go. Well, I suppose it hadn’t occurred to my father to write to that school to reserve a place for me—I know now that that is the proper thing to do; but lots of parents don’t seem to know about it. Several have turned up here with an unexpected girl on opening day; but this is a very large school and perhaps not one of the most popular ones so it doesn’t make so much difference—there are always vacant rooms.
“But when Grandpa presented me at that other school—and I couldn’t tell you where it was if you offered me a million dollars—it was full and they couldn’t take me—or at least they wouldn’t. They gave Grandpa quite a long list of other schools and some catalogues and we went to two other schools before we found one that would take me.”
“Was it this one?” breathed Bettie.
“Yes, this very one. But, by the time we reached this place, we had been getting on and off trains all day. I was so sleepy that I tumbled off my chair and I guess poor old Grandpa was just about walking in his sleep. We’d had a dreadful day. Somebody, I don’t know who, led me off and put me to bed. That’s the last I’ve ever seen of either my father or that poor old Grandpa.”
“But didn’t you write?” queried Jean.
“Yes, indeed. So did Doctor Rhodes—not this Doctor—hum—well, this Doctor’s cousin. But our letters came back from the Dead Letter Office.”
“What does a dead letter look like?” demanded Mabel, with sudden curiosity.
“Just like any other kind,” returned Sallie, “except that they come in a special envelope.”
“Then,” said Jean, “for anything you know to the contrary, your father and this grandfather person may still be living in that apartment, in Chicago?”
“No,” returned Sallie. “They’re not. You see my tuition was paid for the full school year. It was getting along toward the summer vacation when Doctor Rhodes began to write to my father. Afterwards he went to that apartment in Chicago to ask about him; but they could tell him nothing more about him. Then Doctor Rhodes went to a number of hospitals and learned that a John Dickinson had been discharged, after a long, long illness; and that he was still very far from strong when he left the hospital to look for work.”
“The apartment people told Doctor Rhodes that poor old Grandpa had had a breakdown and had been placed in an asylum. Doctor Rhodes visited that place but the poor old man had forgotten all that he had ever known of either me or my father; and quite soon after that he died.”
“Then,” said Henrietta, “your father may still be living.”
“Yes,” returned Sallie. “But, if he were, wouldn’t he hunt for me until he found me? There’s this about it. I’m sure that he thought that he was putting me in a place where I’d be safer and better cared for than I could be with him.”
“Did he have very much money?” asked practical Henrietta.
“I don’t think he had a great deal. He used to say that he was a poor man; and the houses we lived in were always rather small and poor. My mother, I think, had belonged to nice people. As nearly as I can remember, she spoke nicely and wouldn’t let me use slang; and I think her father was a clergyman—I can remember an old photograph; but I’m not very sure about that.
“And here I am now, just like poor old Abbie—a boarding school orphan, with not a relative in the world.”
“No, you’re not like Abbie,” declared Jean. “We won’t let you be like Abbie. You’re smart enough to crawl out of your hole; but Abbie never was.”
“Now,” pleaded Henrietta, “tell us the secret about the Rhodes family. We’re dying of curiosity about that.”
“No,” replied Sallie, firmly. “If I were paying my way with real money I might break my promise and tell. But I don’t know that I would, either; it would take a lot of courage to break a promise to Doctor Rhodes. But, of course, as long as I owe him for my bread and butter, I just couldn’t do it.”
“Of course you couldn’t,” agreed Maude. “It wouldn’t be honorable.”
“That’s just the way I feel about it,” sighed Sallie. “And there isn’t really anything very dreadful about that secret after all.”
“Except our curiosity,” said Henrietta, “that’s just eating us.”
“Pile off this bed, girls,” said Cora, who had looked at her watch. “It’s ten minutes to dinner time and Sallie has left all your hair standing right on end.”
“Say, Sallie, ring the old bell fifty-nine seconds late,” pleaded Maude. “I have to change my dress and the other one buttons behind.”
“I’ll button it all the way downstairs,” promised Cora.