“Isn’t she a cunning little thing?” whispered Helen, seeing how much Ruth was attracted by the little lady.
“She’s not a dwarf. There’s nothing wrong with her,” said Ruth. “She’s just a lady in miniature; isn’t she? Why, Helen, she’s no taller than you are.”
“She’s dainty,” repeated her chum. “But she looks odd.”
Below, on the other deck, the music of a little orchestra had been tinkling pleasantly. Now a man with the harp, another with a violin, and a third with a huge guitar, came up the companionway and grouped themselves to play upon the upper deck. The three musicians were all foreigners—French or Italian. The man who played the harp was a huge, fleshy man, with a red waistcoat and long, black mustache. The waistcoat and mustache were the two most noticeable things about him. He sat on a little campstool while he played.
The musicians struck into some rollicking ditty that pleased the ear. The two girls enjoyed the music, and Helen searched her purse for a coin to give whichever of the musicians came around for the collection at the end of the concert. There was but one person on the forward deck who did not seem to care for the music. The little lady, whose back was to the orchestra, did not even look around.
All the time he was playing the huge man who thrummed the harp seemed to have his eyes fixed upon the little lady. This both Ruth and Helen noted. He was so big and she was so fairy-like, that the girls could not help becoming interested in the fact that the harpist was so deeply “smitten.”
“Isn’t he funny?” whispered Helen to Ruth. “He’s so big and she’s so little. And he pays more attention to her than he does to playing the tune.”
Just then the orchestra of three pieces finished its third tune. That was all it ever jingled forth before making a collection. The man who played the guitar slipped the broad strap over his shoulders and stood up as though to pass his cap. But instantly the huge harpist arose and muttered something to him in a guttural tone. The other sat down and the big man seized the cap and began to move about the deck to make such collection as the audience was disposed to give for the music.
Although he had stared so at the unconscious lady’s back, the big man did not go in her direction at first, as the two girls quite expected him to do. He went around to the other side of the deck after taking Helen’s toll, and so manoeuvred as to come to the end of the lady’s bench and suddenly face her.
“See him watch her, Ruth?” whispered Helen again. “I believe he knows her.”
There was such a sly smile on the fat man’s face that he seemed to be having a joke all to himself; yet his eyebrows were drawn down over his nose in a scowl. It was not a pleasant expression that he carried on his countenance to the little lady, before whom he appeared with a suddenness that would have startled almost anybody. He wheeled around the end of the settee on which she sat and hissed some word or phrase in her ear, leaning over to do so.
The little woman sprang up with a smothered shriek. The girls heard her chatter something, in which the word “merci” was plain. She shrank from the big man; but he was only bowing very low before her, with the cap held out for a contribution, and his grinning face aside.
“She is French,” whispered Helen, excitedly, in Ruth’s ear. “And he spoke in the same language. How frightened she is!”
Indeed, the little lady fumbled in her handbag for something which she dropped into the insistent cap of the harpist. Then, almost running along the deck, she whisked into the cabin. She had pulled the veil over her face again, but as she passed the girls they felt quite sure that she was sobbing.
The big harpist, with the same unpleasant leer upon his face, rolled down the deck in her wake, carelessly humming a fragment of the tune he had just been playing. He had collected all the contributions in his big hand—a pitiful little collection of nickels and dimes—and he tossed them into the air and caught them expertly as he joined the other players. Then all three went aft to repeat their concert.
An hour later the Lanawaxa docked at Portageton. When our young friends went ashore and walked up the freight-littered wharf, Ruth suddenly pulled Helen’s sleeve.
“Look there! There—behind the bales of rags going to the paper-mill. Do you see them?” whispered Ruth.
“I declare!” returned her chum. “Isn’t that mysterious? It’s the little foreign lady and the big man who played the harp—and how earnestly they are talking.”
“You see, she knew him after all,” said Ruth. “But what a wicked-looking man he is! And she was frightened when he spoke to her.”
“He looks villainous enough to be a brigand,” returned her chum, laughing. “Yet, whoever heard of a fat brigand? That would take the romance all out of the profession; wouldn’t it?”
“And fat villains are not so common; are they?” returned Ruth, echoing the laugh.
CHAPTER III
APPROACHING THE PROMISED LAND
Tom had tried to remove the smut of the steamboat engine-room from his face with his handkerchief; but as his sister told him, his martial appearance in the uniform of the Seven Oaks cadets was rather spoiled by “a smootchy face.” There wasn’t time then, however, to make any toilet before the train left. They were off on the short run to Seven Oaks in a very few minutes after leaving the Lanawaxa.
Tom was very much excited now. He craned his head out of the car window to catch the first glimpse of the red brick barracks and dome of the gymnasium, which were the two most prominent buildings belonging to the Academy. Finally the hill on which the school buildings stood flashed into view. They occupied the summit of the knoll, while the seven great oaks, standing in a sort of druidical circle, dotted the smooth, sloping lawn that descended to the railroad cut.
“Oh, how ugly!” cried Helen, who had never seen the place before. “I do hope that Briarwood Hall will be prettier than that, or I shall want to run back home the very first week.”
Her brother smiled in a most superior way.
“That’s just like a girl,” he said. “Wanting a school to look pretty! Pshaw! I want to see a jolly crowd of fellows, that’s what I want. I hope I’ll get in with a good crowd. I know Gil Wentworth, who came here last year, and he says he’ll put me in with a nice bunch. That’s what I’m looking forward to.”
The train was slowing down. There was a handsome brick station and a long platform. This was crowded with boys, all in military garb like Tom’s own. They looked so very trim and handsome that Helen and Ruth were quite excited. There were boys ranging from little fellows of ten, in knickerbockers, to big chaps whose mustaches were sprouting on their upper lips.
“Oh, dear me!” gasped Ruth. “See what a crowd we have got to go through. All those boys!”
“That’s all right,” Tom said, gruffly. “I’ll see you to the stage. There it stands yonder—and a jolly old scarecrow of a carriage it is, too!”
He was evidently feeling somewhat flurried himself. He was going to meet more than half the great school informally right there at the station. They had gathered to meet and greet “freshmen.”
But the car in which our friends rode stopped well along the platform and very near the spot where the old, brown, battered, and dust-covered stage coach, drawn by two great, bony horses, stood in the fall sunshine. Most of the Academy boys were at the other end of the platform.
Gil Wentworth, Tom’s friend, had given young Cameron several pointers as to his attitude on arrival at the Seven Oaks station. He had been advised to wear the school uniform (he had passed the entrance examinations two months before) so as to be less noticeable in the crowd.
Very soon a slow and dirge-like chant arose from the cadets gathered on the station platform. From the rear cars of the train had stepped several boys in citizen’s garb, some with parents or guardians and some alone, and all burdened with more or less baggage and a doubtful air that proclaimed them immediately “new boys.” The hymn
of greeting rose in mournful cadence:
“Freshie! Freshie! How-de-do!
We’re all waiting here for you.
Hold your head up!
Square each shoulder!
Thrust your chest out!
Do look bolder!
Mamma’s precious—papa’s man—
Keep the tears back if you can.
Sob! Sob! Sob!
It’s an awful job—
Freshie’s leaving home and mo-o-ther!”
The mournful wailing of that last word cannot be expressed by mere type. There were other verses, too, and as the new boys filed off into the path leading up to the Academy with their bags and other encumbrances, the uniformed boys, en masse, got into step behind them and tramped up the hill, singing this dreadful dirge. The unfortunate new arrivals had to listen to the chant all the way up the hill. If they ran to get away from the crowd, it only made them look the more ridiculous; the only sensible way was to endure it with a grin.
Tom grinned widely himself, for he had certainly been overlooked. Or, he thought so until he had placed the two girls safely in the big omnibus, had kissed Helen good-bye, and shaken hands with Ruth. But the girls, looking out of the open door of the coach, saw him descend from the step into the midst of a group of solemn-faced boys who had only held back out of politeness to the girls whom Tom escorted.
Helen and Ruth, stifling their amusement, heard and saw poor Tom put through a much more severe examination than the other boys, for the very reason that he had come dressed in his uniform. He was forced to endure a searching inquiry regarding his upbringing and private affairs, right within the delighted hearing of the wickedly giggling girls. And then a tall fellow started to put him through the manual of arms.
Poor Tom was all at sea in that, and the youth, with gravity, declared that he was insulting the uniform by his ignorance and caused him to remove his coat and turn it inside out; and so Helen and Ruth saw him marched away with his stern escort, in a most ridiculous red flannel garment (the lining of the coat) which made him conspicuous from every barrack window and, indeed, from every part of the academy hill.
“Oh, dear me!” sighed Helen, wiping her eyes and almost sobbing after her laughter. “And Tommy thought he would escape any form of hazing! He wasn’t so cute as he thought he was.”
But Ruth suddenly became serious. “Suppose we are greeted in any such way at Briarwood?” she exclaimed. “I believe some girls are horrid. They have hazing in some girls’ schools, I’ve read. Of course, it won’t hurt us, Helen—”
“It’ll be just fun, I think!” cried the enthusiastic Helen and then she stopped with an explosive “Oh!”
There was being helped into the coach by the roughly dressed and bewhiskered driver, the little, doll-like, foreign woman whom they thought had been left behind at Portageton.
“There ye air, Ma’mzell!” this old fellow said. “An’ here’s yer bag—an’ yer umbrella—an’ yer parcel. All there, be ye? Wal, wal, wal! So I got two more gals fer Briarwood; hev I?”
He was a jovial, rough old fellow, with a wind-blown face and beard and hair enough to make his head look to be as big as a bushel basket. He was dressed in a long, faded “duster” over his other nondescript garments, and his battered hat was after the shape of those worn by Grand Army men. He limped, too, and was slow in his movements and deliberate in his speech.
“I s’pose ye be goin’ ter Briarwood, gals?” he added, curiously.
“Yes,” replied Ruth.
“Where’s yer baggage?” he asked.
“We only have our bags. Our trunks have gone by the way of Lumberton,” explained Ruth.
“Ah! Well! All right!” grunted the driver, and started to shut the door. Then he glanced from Ruth and Helen to the little foreign lady. “I leave ye in good hands,” he said, with a hoarse chuckle. “This here lady is one o’ yer teachers, Ma’mzell Picolet.” He pronounced the little lady’s name quite as outlandishly as he did “mademoiselle.” It sounded like “Pickle-yet” on his tongue.
“That will do, M’sieur Dolliver,” said the little lady, rather tartly. “I may venture to introduce myself—is it not?”
She did not raise her veil. She spoke English with scarcely any accent. Occasionally she arranged her phrases in an oddly foreign way; but her pronunciation could not be criticised. Old Dolliver, the stage driver, grinned broadly as he closed the door.
“Ye allus make me feel like a Frenchman myself, when ye say ‘moosher,’ Ma’mzell,” he chuckled.
“You are going to Briarwood Hall, then, my young ladies?” said Miss Picolet.
“Yes, Ma’am,” said Ruth, shyly.
“I shall be your teacher in the French language—perhaps in deportment and the graces of life,” the little lady said, pleasantly. “You will both enter into advanced classes, I hope?”
Helen, after all, was more shy than Ruth with strangers. When she became acquainted she gained confidence rapidly. But now Ruth answered again for both:
“I was ready to enter the Cheslow High School; Helen is as far advanced as I am in all studies, Miss Picolet.”
“Good!” returned the teacher. “We shall get on famously with such bright girls,” and she nodded several times.
But she was not really companionable. She never raised her veil. And she only talked with the girls by fits and starts. There were long spaces of time when she sat huddled in the corner of her seat, with her face turned from them, and never said a word.
But the nearer the rumbling old stagecoach approached the promised land of Briarwood Hall the more excited Ruth and Helen became. They gazed out of the open windows of the coach doors and thought the country through which they traveled ever so pretty. Occasionally old Dolliver would lean out from his seat, twist himself around in a most impossible attitude so as to see into the coach, and bawl out to the two girls some announcement of the historical or other interest of the localities they passed.
Suddenly, as they surmounted a long ridge and came out upon the more open summit, they espied a bridle path making down the slope, through an open grove and across uncultivated fields beyond—a vast blueberry pasture. Up this path a girl was coming. She swung her hat by its strings in her hand and commenced to run up the hill when she spied the coach.
She was a thin, wiry, long-limbed girl. She swung her hat excitedly and although the girls in the coach could not hear her, they knew that she shouted to Old Dolliver. He pulled up, braking the lumbering wheels grumblingly. The newcomer’s sharp, freckled face grew plainer to the interested gaze of Ruth and Helen as she came out of the shadow of the trees into the sunlight of the dusty highway.
“Got any Infants, Dolliver?” the girl asked, breathlessly.
“Two on ’em, Miss Cox,” replied the stage driver.
“Then I’m in time. Of course, nobody’s met ’em?”
“Hist! Ma’mzell’s in there,” whispered Dolliver, hoarsely.
“Oh! She!” exclaimed Miss Cox, with plain scorn of the French teacher. “That’s all right, Dolliver. I’ll get in. Ten cents, mind you, from here to Briarwood. That’s enough.”
“All right, Miss Cox. Ye allus was a sharp one,” chuckled Dolliver, as the sharp-faced girl jerked open the nearest door of the coach and stared in, blinking, out of the sunlight.
CHAPTER IV
THE RIVALRY OF THE UPEDES AND THE FUSSY CURLS
The passengers in the Seven Oaks and Lumberton stage sat facing one another on the two broad seats. Mademoiselle Picolet had established herself in one corner of the forward seat, riding with her back to the driver. Ruth and Helen were side by side upon the other seat, and this newcomer slid quickly in beside them and smiled a very broad and friendly smile at the two chums.
“When you’ve been a little while at Briarwood Hall,” she said, in her quick, pert way, “you’ll learn that that’s
the only way to do with Old Dolliver. Make your bargain before you get into the Ark—that’s what we call this stage—or he surely will overcharge you. Oh! how-do, Miss Picolet!”
She spoke to the French teacher so carelessly—indeed, in so scornful a tone—that Ruth was startled. Miss Picolet bowed gravely and said something in return in her own language which made Miss Cox flush, and her eyes sparkle. It was doubtless of an admonishing nature, but Ruth and Helen did not understand it.
“Of course, you are the two girls whom we ex—that is, who were expected to-day?” the girl asked the chums, quickly.
“We are going to Briarwood Hall,” said Ruth, timidly.
“Well, I’m glad I happened to be out walking and overtook the stage,” their new acquaintance said, with apparent frankness and cordiality. “I’m Mary Cox. I’m a Junior. The school is divided into Primary, Junior and Senior. Of course, there are many younger girls than either of you at Briarwood, but all newcomers are called Infants. Probably, however, you two will soon be in the Junior grade, if you do not at once enter it.”
“I am afraid we shall both feel very green and new,” Ruth said. “You see, neither Helen nor I have ever been to a school like this before. My friend is Helen Cameron and my name is Ruth Fielding.”
“Ah! you’re going to room together. You have a nice room assigned to you, too. It’s on my corridor—one of the small rooms. Most of us are in quartettes; but yours is a duet room. That’s nice, too, when you are already friends.”
She seemed to have informed herself regarding these particular newcomers, even if she had met them quite by accident.
Helen, who evidently quite admired Mary Cox, now ventured to say that she presumed most of the girls were already gathered for the Autumn term.
“There are a good many on hand. Some have been here a week and more. But classes won’t begin until Saturday, and then the work will only be planned for the real opening of the term on Monday. But we’re all supposed to arrive in time to attend service Sunday morning. Mrs. Tellingham is very strict about that. Those who arrive after that have a demerit to work off at the start.”
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