Girls of Highland Hall: Further Adventures of the Dandelion Cottagers

by Carroll Watson Rankin

  CHAPTER VIII

  BRAVE VICTORIA

  Almost at once, there was one very curious and amusing result of MadameBolande's friendship for "Gladys de Milligan." Madame, who apparentlytook no interest in her own hair, professed great admiration for that ofthe new pupil and offered to teach her a new and even fancier way ofarranging it.

  One night, to that end, Madame mixed an exceedingly sticky something ina cup--quince seed and water, Laura explained afterwards--and applied itto Laura's pale yellow locks. After plastering them down in large wetrings all over Laura's foolish head, Madame fished the remnant of an oldgreen veil from her untidy bureau drawer and tied it firmly over theslippery mass. Her intentions were perfectly good but the result wassurprising.

  By morning, the quince seed was dry and it was possible to brush thestuff, in a powdery shower of white particles, from the mass of loosecurls. But alas! A shocking thing had happened. The dye in the greenveil had proved anything but permanent. It had spent the night_running_. Poor Gladys Evelyn appeared late for breakfast with red eyesand bright green hair. It was at least a month before her tangled lockslost their verdant hue.

  "Never mind, Gladys," soothed Grace Allen. "Mermaids have green hair andyou know how beautiful _they_ are."

  Oddly enough, this curious mishap made several new friends for Gladysamong the girls, whose ready sympathy was aroused for an unfortunatemaiden who had to go about with pale green hair. Augusta Lemon was oneof those tender hearted young persons, Lillian Thwaite another. Aboutthis time, too, Grace Allen began to wander about, arm in arm, withGladys.

  Cora Doyle, to whom the Lakeville girls were greatly indebted for muchof the past history of Highland Hall, proved a likeable girl, after onelearned not to believe all that she said. Cora just naturallyexaggerated. When she was cold she was absolutely frozen. When she waswarm, she was positively boiled. If she possessed one black and bluespot she _knew_ she had ten thousand and if she were slightly indisposedshe was positive she was dying. In short, she called "Wolf, Wolf," whenthe wolf was conspicuously absent.

  This trait of Cora's was beginning to lead to embarrassing consequences.Cora's wild statements in school were always taken with a grain of salt.Worse than that, her own people wouldn't believe her. Even when sheoutgrew her shoes and wrote home for larger ones, they were sure sheonly meant more stylish ones; so poor Cora limped about in short shoesand acquired a corn. And now she had a new trouble. Whether it wasbasketball or the extra pie that she ate under the porch with Maude, noone knew, but Cora began suddenly to grow very rapidly. Her sleeves andher skirts were visibly retreating and she was showing more wrist andmore stocking than was considered becoming.

  "My folks won't _believe_ me," wailed Cora, reading her letter fromhome. "I've _told_ them that my knees show and my sleeves are up to myelbows and they won't _believe_ me."

  "But your skirts _aren't_ up to your knees," laughed Marjory.

  "Anyway, they're getting there and I have to stay up nights letting outhems."

  "Never mind," consoled Jean, "your folks will see for themselves, whenyou go home for Christmas. Of course you may have to go in a paper bag--"

  "That's just the trouble. I _don't_ go home for Christmas--I live too faraway. I'm going to visit Maude in Chicago--and it's _her_ folks that willsee for themselves how many miles of legs and wrists I'm showing."

  "That's what you get for stretching things," laughed Henrietta. "Yourarms and legs have caught it."

  "_I_ didn't get any letter at all," grumbled Mabel. "Anybody gets morethan I do."

  "Cheer up," said Jean. "Perhaps you'll have two tomorrow. In themeantime you can read mine--there's quite a lot of Lakeville news in it."

  "Wait a minute, girls," called Helen Miller, climbing up on the platformbeside Sallie. "Have any of you seen my amethyst pendant? I _thought_ Ileft it in a little box on my dresser, but I _may_ have worn it out anddropped it. Anyway, if you find one, it's mine."

  Several of the girls looked at one another significantly.

  Queer things were happening at Highland Hall. There were mysteriousdisappearances; but whether they were due to carelessness or whetherthey were due to theft, no one could say. The fact remained. Variousthings of more or less value had vanished; and their owners were bothpuzzled and distressed. Hazel Benton had somehow lost her wrist watch,Ruth Dennis mourned a gold pencil that usually dangled from a ribbonabout her neck, Mabel's sentimental roommate, Isabelle, could not findthe large gold locket containing Clarence's picture--_that_ vanished,Isabelle declared, while she was taking a bath, the _only_ time shedidn't have it on.

  Then, one morning, there was a scene in the dining room, where the girlsand the teachers were eating their breakfast rolls and the two neatmaids were passing the coffee. Madame Bolande, all excitement, and withher black dress face-powdered from collar to hem and her hair evenwilder than usual, rushed into the dining room and declared volubly thattwo ten dollar bills had disappeared from the stocking under her bed.

  "And," declared Madame, balefully, "eet ees zat Mees Henrietta zat havetaken zem. She ees the most baddest Mademoiselle zat I have een myclass."

  At this point, just when things were getting really interesting, Doctorand Mrs. Rhodes rose hastily from their chairs, seized Madame by theelbows and escorted her quite neatly from the public gaze. The girlswould have been glad to hear more.

  Fortunately no one believed Madame's accusation of Henrietta because allthe girls knew how little love was lost between that lively girl and theuntidy French woman. Madame always blamed Henrietta for anything thathappened. Occasionally she was right, because Henrietta was a youngbundle of mischief, with no respect whatsoever for Madame Bolande; butthe girls knew that Henrietta was no thief. And Henrietta, far fromappearing downcast at Madame's outrageous words, giggled cheerfully andconsidered it a joke.

  And then something else happened that turned even Madame's unjustsuspicion away from Henrietta. There was a burglar scare, a _real_burglar scare, in Hiltonburg. It lasted three weeks, during which timesuddenly intimidated householders locked _all_ their doors instead ofjust a few, bought catches for every one of their windows and causedthemselves agonies of discomfort by putting their valuables away insupposedly burglar-proof spots overnight. Whether or not there reallywas a burglar at the bottom of this alarm nobody was able to discover;but the scare was certainly big enough and genuine enough while itlasted to upset the entire community. It started in the heart of thevillage, worked itself gradually along the State road, and, by the timeit was a week or ten days old, crept through the hedge that surroundedHighland Hall and right into the house itself.

  For days the girls talked of nothing else. Of course the different girlswere affected in different ways. The three Seniors moved into one roomand slept three in a bed, with their valuables under the mattress.Little Lillian Thwaite couldn't think of the burglar without turningfaint. Alice Bailey's big black eyes grew so much bigger and blacker atmention of him that the sight always sent Augusta Lemon, who wasparticularly sympathetic, into spasms of fear. Bettie refused to walkthrough the corridors alone, even by broad daylight.

  Victoria Webster was of different fiber. "Victoria," as everybody knows,means "A Conqueror." It certainly seemed as if this particular bearer ofthe name had conquered fear. At any rate she was not afraid. Moreover,she was not only courageous but she bragged about it until the othergirls were just a little tired of it.

  "I'd like to see the burglar I'd be afraid of," boasted Victoria. "Seehere, Lillian, if you and Augusta and Bettie are afraid, I'll move intothe West Dormitory and take care of you."

  "I wish to goodness you would," declared Lillian. "Bettie's all right,but Augusta and I are all alone in number twenty-six."

  "Do move in today," pleaded Augusta. "There's a vacant bed--really,that's one reason why the room is so scary. It's bad enough to have tolook under one's own bed without having that extra one--we've been takingturns. Let's go and ask Miss Woodruff to let you come--she's the matronin our corridor, you know
."

  "I was about to suggest that very thing," replied Miss Woodruff,regarding burglar-proof Victoria with a quizzical eye. "If this braveVictoria can instill some of her surplus courage into this quakingLillian and this shuddering Augusta, by all means let her do it."

  "Victoria is really almost too courageous," remarked Mrs. Henry Rhodes,when the girls had left the school room. "She just bristles withbravery. I'd like to frighten her just once. She'd have made a fine boy,wouldn't she, with those broad, sturdy shoulders!"

  "She'd have made a blustering one. I suspect that if she _had_ been one,every other boy that knew her would have been tempted to put her braveryto the test. I don't think that boys take as kindly to braggarts asgirls do."

  But even the girls, with the exception of timid Lillian and terrifiedAugusta, began to grow tired of Victoria's boasting; for, braced by theadmiring devotion of her roommates, Victoria could talk of nothing buther own bravery.

  "If a burglar came," Victoria would brag, "I'd look him straight in theeye and say: 'See here, Mr. Burglar, I want to talk to you as man toman. I take it you're a man of sense. Your time is valuable. You'rewasting it here. We've only thirty cents a week pocket money. If youwere mean enough to take it all you wouldn't get much. Our jewels camefrom the five and ten cent store; so just run along to a place wherethey really _have_ money.'"

  "Would you _really_?" demanded Augusta.

  "Yes, I would. I've never seen the time yet when I've really been afraidof anything."

  "They say," quavered Lillian, "that they found footsteps--yes, Marjory, Imeant foot-prints--under the Browns' dining room window last Friday--onlythree houses from this one. Oh, I'm so scared I can't eat my meals."

  "Don't be alarmed," said Victoria. "You have _me_."

  Victoria had bragged all day. She was still bragging when she climbedinto bed, with Lillian's cot at her left, Augusta's at her right.

  An hour later, the west corridor was wrapped in silence; or it wouldhave been if nine girls had not assembled in Henrietta's room to whisperexcitedly in one another's ears. Inadvertently, they whispered too inMiss Woodruff's, as she stood listening just outside the door. MissWoodruff was not a prying person. She was merely assuring herself thatthe noises that she couldn't help hearing were made by girls, notburglars.

  "Good!" whispered the pleased teacher as she gathered the gist of thisanimated buzzing. "It's a thing I'd love to do myself. Victoria had itcoming to her. I shall aid and abet those merry plotters by staying verysound asleep for the next hour."

  Whereupon Miss Woodruff very gently closed her own door and to allappearances had finished her matronly duties for the night.

  Ten minutes later, a small white scout slipped noiselessly down the darkcorridor toward the room in which Victoria was sleeping. Presently sheslipped back into Henrietta's.

  "All three are sound asleep," reported Jane. "You could stick pins intoVictoria and she wouldn't know it. Now's the time for action. Don'twaste a minute. She'll never be sounder asleep than she is now."

  "Jane," whispered Henrietta, "you and Marjory must get into those twoempty beds in the room directly across the hall from Victoria's and_stay_ in them long enough to get them warmed up, so we can move thoseother two girls into them. We'll wait fifteen minutes longer. But ifLillian and Augusta _should_ wake up, we'll just have to whisk them intoa closet and clap our hands over their mouths."

  For perhaps three quarters of an hour that night, Miss Woodruff heardthe light patter of bare feet on the corridor matting, the subduedwhisperings of girlish voices, the quickly hushed clattering of woodagainst wood, of metal against crockery, the dragging of bulky objectsthrough narrow doorways. These sounds were punctuated by little gusts ofstifled laughter, followed each time by brief periods of absolutesilence.

  "I do hope," she whispered, "they'll succeed. Victoria certainly needstaking down. Dear me, how Marjory giggles! She was never designed for acareer of successful burglary."

  After a time the slight brushing of exploring hands and flutteringgarments against the corridor walls, told of the otherwise silent flightof nine girlish forms down the long, dark hallway. Then Henrietta's doorclosed with a tiny click and for fully fifteen minutes afterwards soundsof suppressed mirth sifted back to Miss Woodruff's patient but approvingears.

  The house was silent when the great clock in the lower hall boomed"One." Victoria, who had been dreaming in an entirely unprecedentedmanner, suddenly awoke, to experience a curious sense of physicaldiscomfort. Something was wrong. She groped for the bedclothes. Theywere gone. She stretched out both hands and her groping fingers came incontact with a firm, level, cold surface not unlike hardwood floor. Shemoved her fingers--it _was_ floor. No other polished surface had thoseregularly recurring cracks, Victoria, much alarmed, crept on hands andknees, about the empty room. The window was open, the door closed. Witha little gasp of relief, she opened it.

  "Thank goodness!" breathed tremulous Victoria, groping about in thehallway, "I'm not locked in. But where in the world am I? Here's anotherdoor."

  It opened. Here, window shades were up and puzzled Victoria made out theoutlines of three beds. Her bare toes touched the big fur rug that sheknew belonged to Anne Blodgett, her opposite neighbor. The feel of afamiliar object in this world of uncertainties was a comfortingsensation.

  "Anne!" gasped chattering Victoria, plunging bodily into Anne's bed."I'm frightened to pieces! If that was my room that I've just come outof there isn't a thing left in it. My bed--even Lillian and Augusta havebeen stolen. Burglars--or something--carried off every single thing butme. I suppose I was too heavy. I found the window open."

  Anne giggled. There were giggles from the other beds. Victoria guessedthe truth. Then having much good sense back of her shortcomings shegiggled too.

  "Well," she laughed, "that was a great joke on me, all right. I might bebrave enough if I happened to be awake; but what's the use of couragewhen a burglar with any enterprise at all could carry me right off tothe next county without waking me up."

  "Did you _really_ think it was a sure enough burglar?" asked Anne.

  "Yes, I did," returned honest Victoria, snuggling closer to Anne's warmbody, "and I was simply scared pink. When I found that window wide openinstead of just a few inches I was _sure_ somebody had climbed in andcarried off everything but _me_--and I wasn't sure he _hadn't_ taken meas well. I could just _see_ a great big black burglar going up and downa long ladder, with bundles on his back, and a partner down below tohelp him with the heavy ones."

  "We didn't mean to scare you as much as _that_," said Anne, "but youcertainly are a fine sleeper. We pulled you around a lot."

  "My mother always said I could outsleep the sleepiest of the 'SevenSleepers' and I guess she was right. But I'm not the _only_ one, Where'sMiss Woodruff all this time? I thought she _never_ slept."

  "Well, she did tonight," said Anne, supposing she was telling the truth."And it's lucky for us that she did."

  "But how did you ever move Lillian and Augusta without waking them?"

  "We _didn't_. Lillian jumped up the minute we touched her but Jane toldher what we were doing so she pitched right in and helped. But Augustawoke right up in the middle of the corridor and began to bleat like thelost sheep of Israel so Henrietta stuffed a stocking in her mouth--one ofyour thick woolen ones--and jammed her into the clothes press. We hadquite a time explaining that we were _not_ the burglar. We handed herJane's flashlight so she could _see_ it was us; but she turned it onherself and that frightened her more than ever. She shivered and madequeer noises, so Maude had to sit beside her on a lot of shoes and holdher hand for the longest time--and you know Maude hates to hold hands;but Augusta's all right now. Now move over, Vicky, and take another ofyour famous naps. You're welcome to half of my bed as long as you don'ttake your half out of the middle."

  The burglar scare subsided gradually and Victoria returned to her owncorridor to room with Gladys de Milligan.

  "I wouldn't have picked _her_ out," sighed Victoria, "but Gl
adys_wanted_ me--I'm sure I can't see why."

  "_I_ should have thought," said Marjory, "she'd like a more wide awakeroommate so she could _talk_ all night. Gladys does love to talk."

  "Not at night," returned Victoria. "She lets me go to sleep at nineo'clock sharp and that's the last I hear of her until morning."