It was raining that Thursday morning and nobody was pleased. The recitation rooms were dark and gloomy on rainy days and all plans for a pleasant afternoon outdoors were spoiled. Naturally the girls hated the idea of being confined to the veranda when prairie, grove and meadow were so much more inviting. The morning had seemed long and poky, lessons had proved uncommonly monotonous, there was nothing at all interesting for lunch and study hour had dragged; but at last, here was Sallie with the mail bag. Everybody but Henrietta brightened perceptibly. Henrietta looked as if she were trying—without very much success—to brace herself for a trying ordeal.
Mabel, however, looked cheerfully expectant. Nowadays there was always at least one letter a week for Mabel from Germany, and when it came Mabel always felt quite distinguished; she was the only girl who received letters from a foreign land. She felt especially elated whenever Miss Wilson, the very stiffest of the Seniors, begged for the stamps to send to her brother who was making a collection. On this particular day, there were letters for most of the Lakeville girls and for Mabel too; but all four of them were casting anxious glances in Henrietta’s direction. They had acquired the habit. Their hearts were wrung by her obvious suffering and by the courage with which she endured it. This long suspense was really getting to be hard on all of them.
“Miss Henrietta Bedford,” called Sallie.
Henrietta, pale and trembling, forced herself to step to the platform, received her letter, carried it to the window and nervously tore it open. Jean had followed her quietly and stood waiting to comfort her in case of need. After a moment or two, Henrietta pointed silently to the opening words and Jean read: “Still no news of your dear father.”
Presently Jean and Henrietta left the room and the sympathetic eyes of the other girls followed them to the doorway.
“That’s worse than losing a relative by sudden death,” said Eleanor Pratt, soberly.
“Yes,” agreed Elisabeth Wilson. “This suspense must be perfectly harrowing—in fact, I can see it is. Poor kid! I’m so sorry for her I don’t know what to do.”
“There isn’t anything one can do,” said Beatrice Holmes. “I’ve watched her every day at mail time and it’s just pitiful to see how she hates to open her letters.”
The mail distributed, some of the girls went to their respective rooms to remove from their persons the ink stains, chalk dust and other visible signs of a busy session in school. Others flocked to the veranda to stroll back and forth like caged lions grumbling in captivity.
“This is a beastly rain,” said little Jane Pool. “The ground is just soaked.”
“‘It isn’t raining rain, today,’” quoted Grace Allen, “‘it’s raining—’”
“Water,” said unpoetical Mabel.
“Violets,” concluded Grace.
“Water,” insisted Mabel.
“Violets,” said Grace.
“Both wrong,” said Debbie Clark. “It’s roses. We’ve had violets.”
“I don’t see any of those, either,” said Mabel, crossly. “It’s just plain water. I can’t even go to look at my pig.”
“You ought to sit beside him with an umbrella,” teased Debbie. “He may be getting drowned.”
“He’s all right,” assured always-comforting Sallie. “Charles moved him into the barn—he knew it was going to rain. Hello, Maude, why so pensive? What mischief are you cooking up now?”
“That’s just the trouble,” complained Maude. “Nothing will cook. I’ve been trying hard to think of something awfully wicked to do to cheer poor Henrietta up. The trouble is, when I really want to be bad I can’t do it. My badness always breaks out of its own accord when I least expect it; just when I’m really trying to be good. When it’s really necessary for me to be wicked, as it is right now, I surprise everybody—and especially dear Miss Woodruff—by being too good to be true. A regular angel child!”
“Still,” offered Hazel, “you managed to start something yesterday. I thought I’d die when I looked out the window and saw all you girls turning somersaults on the lawn.”
“What was that?” asked Isabelle. “I must have missed something.”
“You missed a lot,” assured Maude. “Charles left a large heap of stuff he had clipped from the hedges and the grass he had raked up after galloping around all the morning with his lawn mower, in a lovely big pile right in front of the office windows. Well, the minute I saw it yesterday afternoon, I forgot that I was a boarding school ‘Young lady’—I was back in my childhood—I was a girl again.”
“What did you do?” demanded Isabelle.
“You mean, how many did I do.”
“You didn’t really turn somersaults!”
“I did, and I loved it. And that was too much for Victoria. She did some, too—just lovely ones. So did Cora and Jane and Bettie—nearly all the West Corridor girls. All they needed was little Maude to start them.”
“You’d have thought they weren’t more than six years old,” said Hazel.
“What did Miss Woodruff say?”
“She was going to stop them,” returned Hazel, “but Doctor Rhodes and Mrs. Henry and Miss Blossom came out on the porch and clapped their hands and Doctor Rhodes said he’d give a prize for the girl that could do the best handspring. He offered a quarter, and who do you think got it!”
“Victoria Webster, of course.”
“Dead wrong. It was Eleanor Pratt.”
“What! Not Miss Pratt!”
“Yes. Fancy a Senior doing a handspring! She rushed right down and did a perfectly lovely one and Doctor Rhodes presented her with the quarter. The other two would have tried it next; but just then Charles came with the wagon to pick the stuff up and he was none too pleased at finding it all over the place so we helped him load the wagon. Next time he cuts the grass he’s going to make us a perfectly grand pile. He said he’d bring us up some of that long stuff from the meadow and we can have a regular party. It beats gym all hollow.”
“I’m going in,” said Isabelle, “it’s too wet out here.”
“So am I,” said Hazel.
“And I have to dust the drawing room,” said Sallie. “All those pictures of former graduating classes; all those proud Seniors in their white frocks. It’s particularly harrowing just now because I haven’t a decent rag to wear myself.”
Presently the porch was deserted and the bored girls went to their own rooms.
One of Sallie’s many duties at Highland Hall was to answer the doorbell at such times as the two neat maids were busy in the kitchen. Sallie had just dusted the class of 1897 and was beginning on the frame of class 1898, when the doorbell rang. It had taken her almost an hour to get that far because she had found a new interest in the pictures. She was examining the frocks and wishing that she might have tucks like these or ruffles like those or sleeves like some other one.
Ten minutes later, Sallie, very demure in the white apron that Mrs. Rhodes compelled her to wear when she opened the big front door to chance visitors, rapped at the door of room number twenty. Marjory opened it.
“A gentleman in the library to see Miss Henrietta Bedford,” announced Sallie, sedately. But Sallie’s eyes were dancing and she was a little breathless as if she had been running—as indeed she had—all the long way from the front door.
“A gentleman!” exclaimed Henrietta. “I don’t know any gentleman. Do you mean Doctor Rhodes?”
“I do not,” returned Sallie. “But don’t be frightened—there isn’t anything about this to frighten you.”
“Some one from Lakeville? Not Mr. Black?”
“No. You must come down and see for yourself. I was told to bring you.”
“I believe you and Maude have been up to some trick. You’re just fooling me. There couldn’t be a gentleman in the library to see me.”
“But there is,” declared Sallie. “You’ll just hate yourself if you don’t hurry. Do start. I want to see you moving before I deliver this Special Delivery letter to Isabelle—two cent stamps aren’t swift enough for Clarence.”
Henrietta laid her hairbrush down deliberately and started leisurely toward the door.
“Come on, Marjory,” said she, “I ought to have a chaperon if there really is a gentleman, but I’m pretty sure it’s Maude—she loves to dress up and play jokes on us. She might as well have two victims.”
“Do you suppose,” queried Marjory, in an awe-stricken whisper, when the pair had reached the top of the last long flight of stairs, “that it’s that silly Theolog that wrote you a note after he saw you at the concert? There really is a hat on the hat rack.”
“That’s what I’m wondering,” admitted Henrietta. “The silly goose makes eyes at me every Sunday. But surely he wouldn’t have the nerve to call here. If that’s who it is, I shall walk right back upstairs. I know it’s some joke. Sallie’s eyes were just dancing. Just at first I was frightened but I could see by Sallie’s face that it wasn’t anything dreadful.”
“You go ahead,” said Marjory. “If it really is your visitor—”