CHAPTER XIX
THE TRIUMVIRATE
Mercy Curtis came in a week. For Helen of course was only toodelighted to fall in with Mrs. Tellingham's suggestion. Duet Number 2,West Dormitory, was amply large enough for three, and Ruth gave up herbed to the cripple and slept on a couch. Helen herself could not dotoo much for the comfort of the newcomer.
Dr. Davidson and Dr. Cranfew came with her; but really the lame girlbore the journey remarkably well. And how different she looked fromthe thin, peaked girl that Ruth and Helen remembered!
"Oh, you didn't expect to see so much flesh on my bones; did you?" saidMercy, noting their surprise, and being just as sharp and choppy in herobservations as ever. "But I'm getting wickedly and scandalously fat.And I don't often have to repeat Aunt Alviry's song of 'Oh, my back andoh, my bones!'"
Mercy went to bed on her arrival. But the next day she got about inthe room very nicely with the aid of two canes. The handsome ebonycrutches she saved for "Sunday-Best."
Ruth arranged a meeting of the Sweetbriars to welcome the cripple, andMercy seemed really to enjoy having so many girls of her own age abouther. Helen did not bring in many members of the Upedes; indeed, justthen they all seemed to keep away from Duet Two, and none of them spoketo Ruth. That is, none save Jennie Stone. The fat girl was altogethertoo good-natured--and really too kind at heart--to treat Ruth Fieldingas Jennie's roommates did.
"They say you went and told Picolet we were going to have the party inyour room," Heavy said to Ruth, frankly, "and that's how you got out ofit so easily. But I tell them that's all nonsense, you know. If you'dwanted to make us trouble, you would have let Helen have the party inour room, as she wanted to, and so you could have stayed home and notbeen in it at all."
"As she wanted to?" repeated Ruth, slowly. "Did Helen first plan tohave the supper in your quartette?"
"Of course she did. It was strictly a Upede affair--or would have beenif you hadn't been in it. But you're a good little thing, RuthFielding, and I tell them you never in this world told Picolet."
"I did not indeed, Jennie," said Ruth, sadly.
"Well, you couldn't make The Fox believe that. She's sure about it,you see," the stout girl said. "When Mary Cox wants to be mean, shecan be, now I tell you!"
Indeed, Heavy was not like the other three girls in the next room.Mary, Belle and Lluella never looked at Ruth if they could help it, andnever spoke to her. Ruth was not so much hurt over losing such girlsfor friends, for she could not honestly say she had liked them at thestart; but that they should so misjudge and injure her was anothermatter.
She said nothing to Helen about all this; and Helen was as firmlyconvinced that Mary Cox and the other Upedes were jolly girls, as ever.Indeed, they were jolly enough; most of their larks were innocent fun,too. But it was a fact that most of those girls who received extratasks during those first few weeks of the half belonged to the Up andDoing Club.
That Helen escaped punishment was more by good fortune than anythingelse. In the study, however, she and Ruth and Mercy had many merrytimes. Mercy kept both the other girls up to their school tasks, forall lessons seemed to come easy to the lame girl and she helped her twofriends not a little in the preparation of their own.
"The Triumvirate" the other girls in the dormitory building called thethree girls from Cheslow. Before Thanksgiving, Ruth, Helen, and Mercybegan to stand high in their several classes. And Ruth was booked forthe Glee Club, too. She sang every Sunday in the chorus, while Helenplayed second violin in the orchestra, having taken some lessons onthat instrument before coming to Briarwood.
Dr. Cranfew came often at first to see Mercy; but he declared at lastthat he only came socially--there was no need of medical attendance.The cripple could not go to recitations without her crutches, butsometimes in the room she walked with only Ruth's strong arm forsupport. She was getting rosy, too, and began to take exercise in thegymnasium.
"I'll develop my biceps, if my back is crooked and my legs queer," shedeclared. "Then, when any of those _Miss Nancy_ Seniors make fun of mebehind my back, I can punch 'em!" for there were times when Mercy'sold, cross-grained moods came upon her, and she was not so easily bornewith.
Perhaps this fact was one of the things that drove the wedge deeperbetween Ruth and Helen. Ruth would never neglect the crippled girl.She seldom left her in the room alone. Mercy had early joined theSweetbriars, and Ruth and she went to the frequent meetings of thatsociety together, while Helen retained her membership in the Up andDoing Club and spent a deal of her time in the quartette room next door.
Few of the girls went home for Thanksgiving, and as Mercy was not toreturn to Cheslow then, the journey being considered too arduous forher, Ruth decided not to go either. There was quite a feast made bythe school on Thanksgiving, and frost having set in a week before,skating on Triton Lake was in prospect. There was a small pondattached to the Briarwood property and Ruth tried Helen's skates there.She had been on the ice before, but not much; however, she found thatthe art came easily to her--as easily as tennis, in which, by thistime, she was very proficient.
For the day following Thanksgiving there was a trip to Triton Lakeplanned, for that great sheet of water was ice-bound, too, and a smallsteamer had been caught 'way out in the middle of the lake, and wasfrozen in. The project to drive to the lake and skate out to thesteamer (the ice was thick enough to hold up a team of horses, andplenty of provisions had been carried out to the crew) and to have ahot lunch on the boat originated in the fertile brain of Mary Cox; butas it was not a picnic patronized only by the Upedes, Mrs. Tellinghammade no objection to it. Besides, it was vacation week, and thePreceptress was much more lenient.
Of course, Helen was going; but Ruth had her doubts. Mercy could notgo, and the girl of the Red Mill hated to leave her poor littlecrippled friend alone. But Mercy was as sharp of perception as she wasof tongue. When Helen blurted out the story of the skating frolic,Ruth said "she would see" about going; she said she wasn't sure thatshe would care to go.
"I'm such a new skater, you know," she laughed. "Maybe I'd break downskating out to the steamboat, and wouldn't get there, and while all youfolks were eating that nice hot lunch I'd be freezing to death--poorlittle me!--'way out there on the ice."
But Mercy, with her head on one side and her sharp blue eyes lookingfrom Helen to Ruth, shot out:
"Now, don't you think you're smart, Ruth Fielding? Why, I can seeright through you--just as though you were a rag of torn mosquitonetting! You won't go because I'll be left alone."
"No," said Ruth, but flushing.
"Yes," shot back Mercy. "And _I_ don't have to turn red about it,either. Oh, Ruthie, Ruthie! you can't even tell a _white one_ withoutblushing about it."
"I--don't--know----"
"I do know!" declared Mercy. "You're going. I've got plenty to do.You girls can go on and freeze your noses and your toeses, if you like.Me for the steam-heated room and a box of bonbons. But I hope thegirls who go will be nicer to you than some of those Upedes have beenlately, Ruthie."
Helen blushed now; but Ruth hastened to say: "Oh, don't you fuss aboutme, Mercy. Some of the Sweetbriars mean to go. This isn't confined toone club in particular. Madge Steele is going, too, and Miss Polk.And Miss Reynolds, Mrs. Tellingham's first assistant, is going with theparty. I heard all about it at supper. Poor Heavy was full of it; butshe says she can't go because she never could skate so far. Andthen--the ice might break under _her_."
"Whisper!" added Helen, her eyes dancing. "I'll tell you somethingelse--and this I know you don't know!"
"What is it?"
"Maybe Tom will be there. Good old Tom! Just think--I haven't seenhim since we left home. Won't it be just scrumptious to see old Tomagain?"
And Ruth Fielding really thought it would be.
Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall; or, Solving the Campus Mystery Page 19