Mary Cox explained the system under which Briarwood was carried on, too, with much good nature; but all the time she never addressed the French teacher, nor did she pay the least attention to her. The cool way in which she conducted the conversation, commenting upon the school system, the teachers, and all other matters discussed, without the least reference to Miss Picolet, made Ruth, at least, feel unhappy. It was so plain that Mary Cox ignored and slighted the little foreign lady by intention.
“I tell you what we will do,” said Mary Cox, finally. “We’ll slip out of the stage at the end of Cedar Walk. It’s farther to the dormitories that way, but I fancy there’ll be few of the girls there. The stage, you see, goes much nearer to Briarwood; but I fancy you girls would just as lief escape the warm greeting we usually give to the arriving Infants,” and she laughed.
Ruth and Helen, with a vivid remembrance of what they had seen at Seven Oaks, coincided with this suggestion. It seemed very kind of a Junior to put herself out for them, and the chums told her so.
“Don’t bother,” said Mary Cox. “Lots of the girls—especially girls of our age, coming to Briarwood for the first time—get in with the wrong crowd. You don’t want to do that, you know.”
Now, the chums could not help being a little flattered by this statement. Mary Cox was older than Ruth and Helen, and the latter were at an age when a year seemed to be a long time indeed. Besides, Miss Cox was an assured Junior, and knew all about what was still a closed book to Ruth Fielding and Helen Cameron.
“I should suppose in a school like Briarwood,” Ruth said, hesitatingly, “that all the girls are pretty nice.”
“Oh! they are, to a degree. Oh, yes!” cried Mary Cox. “Briarwood is very select and Mrs. Tellingham is very careful. You must know that, Miss Cameron,” she added, point-blank to Helen, “or your father would not have sent you here.”
Helen flushed at this boldly implied compliment. Ruth thought to herself again that Mary Cox must have taken pains to learn all about them before they arrived, and she wondered why the Junior had done so.
“You see, a duo-room costs some money at Briarwood,” explained Miss Cox. “Most of us are glad, when we get to be Juniors, to get into a quarto—a quartette, you understand. The primary girls are in big dormitories, anyway. Of course, we all know who your father is, Miss Cameron, and there will be plenty of the girls fishing for your friendship. And there’s a good deal of rivalry—at the beginning of each year, especially.”
“Rivalry over what?” queried Ruth.
“Why, the clubs,” said Mary Cox.
Helen became wonderfully interested at once. Everything pertaining to the life before her at Briarwood was bound to interest Helen. And the suggestion of society in the way of clubs and associations appealed to her.
“What clubs are there?” she demanded of the Junior.
“Why, there are several associations in the school. The Basket Ball Association is popular; but that’s athletic, not social. Anybody can belong to that who wishes to play. And we have a good school team which often plays teams from other schools. It’s made up mostly of Seniors, however.”
“But the other clubs?” urged Helen.
“Why, the principal clubs of Briarwood are the Upedes and the Fussy Curls,” said their new friend.
“What ridiculous names!” cried Helen. “I suppose they mean something, though?”
“That’s just our way of speaking of them. The Upedes are the Up and Doing Club. The Fussy Curls are the F. C.’s.”
“The F. C.’s?” questioned Ruth. “What do the letters really stand for?”
“Forward Club, I believe. I don’t know much about the Fussy Curls,” Mary said, with the same tone and air that she used in addressing the little French teacher.
“You’re a Upede!” cried Helen, quickly.
“Yes,” said Mary Cox, nodding, and seemed to have finished with that subject. But Helen was interested; she had begun to like this Cox girl, and kept to the subject.
“What are the Upedes and the F. C.’s rivals about?”
“Both clubs are anxious to get members,” Mary Cox said. “Both are putting out considerable effort to gain new members—especially among these who enter Briarwood at the beginning of the year.”
“What are the objects of the rival clubs?” put in Ruth, quietly.
“I couldn’t tell you much about the Fussy Curls,” said Mary, carelessly. “Not being one of them I couldn’t be expected to take much interest in their objects. But our name tells our object at once. ‘Up and Doing’! No slow-coaches about the Upedes. We’re all alive and wide awake.”
“I hope we will get in with a lively set of girls,” said Helen, with a sigh.
“It will be your own fault if you don’t,” said Mary Cox.
Oddly enough, she did not show any desire to urge the newcomers to join the Upedes. Helen was quite piqued by this. But before the discussion could be carried farther, Mary put her head out of the window and called to the driver.
“Stop at the Cedar Walk, Dolliver. We want to get out there. Here’s your ten cents.”
Meanwhile the little foreign lady had scarcely moved. She had turned her face toward the open window all the time, and being veiled, the girls could not see whether she was asleep, or awake. She made no move to get out at this point, nor did she seem to notice the girls when Mary flung open the door on the other side of the coach, and Ruth and Helen picked up their bags to follow her.
The chums saw that the stage had halted where a shady, winding path seemed to lead up a slight rise through a plantation of cedars. But the spot was not lonely. Several girls were waiting here for the coach, and they greeted Mary Cox when she jumped down, vociferously.
“Well, Mary Cox! I guess we know what you’ve been up to,” exclaimed one who seemed older than the other girls in waiting.
“Did you rope any Infants, Mary?” cried somebody else.
“’The Fox’ never took all that long walk for nothing,” declared another.
But Mary Cox paid her respects to the first speaker only, by saying:
“If you want to get ahead of the Upedes, Madge Steele, you Fussy Curls had better set your alarm clocks a little earlier.”
Ruth and Helen were climbing out of the old coach now, and the girl named Madge Steele looked them over sharply.
“Pledged, are they?” she said to Mary Cox, in a low tone.
“Well! I’ve been riding in the Ark with them for the last three miles. Do you suppose I have been asleep?” returned Miss Cox, with a malicious smile.
Ruth and Helen did not distinctly hear this interchange of words between their new friend and Madge Steele; but Ruth saw that the latter was a very well dressed and quiet looking girl—that she was really very pretty and ladylike. Ruth liked her appearance much more than she did that of Mary Cox. But the latter started at once into the cedar plantation, up a serpentine walk, and Helen and Ruth, perforce, went with her. The other girls stood aside—some of them whispering together and smiling at the newcomers. The chums could not help but feel strange and nervous, and Mary Cox’s friendship seemed of value to them just then.
Ruth, however, looked back at the tall girl whose appearance had so impressed her. The coach had not started on at once. Old Dolliver did everything slowly. But Ruth Fielding saw a hand beckoning at the coach window. It was the hand of Miss Picolet, the French teacher, and it beckoned Madge Steele.
The latter young lady ran to the coach as it lurched forward on its way. Miss Picolet’s face appeared at the window for an instant, and she seemed to say something of importance to Madge Steele. Ruth saw the pretty girl pull open the stage-coach door again, and hop inside. Then the Ark lumbered out of view, and Ruth turned to follow her chum and Mary Cox up the winding Cedar Walk.
CHAPTER V
“THE DUET”
Helen, by this time, ha
ving recovered her usual self-possession, was talking “nineteen to the dozen” to their new friend. Ruth was not in the least suspicious; but Mary Cox’s countenance was altogether too sharp, her gray eyes were too sly, her manner to the French teacher had been too unkind, for Ruth to become greatly enamored of the Junior. It did really seem very kind of her, however, to put herself out in this way for two “Infants.”
“How many teachers are there?” Helen was asking. “And are they all as little as that Miss Picolet?”
“Oh, she!” ejaculated Mary Cox, with scorn. “Nobody pays any attention to her. She’s not liked, I can tell you.”
“Why, she seemed nice enough to us—only not very friendly,” said Helen, slowly, for Helen was naturally a kind-hearted girl.
“She’s a poverty-stricken little foreigner. She scarcely ever wears a decent dress. I don’t really see why Mrs. Tellingham has her at the school at all. She has no friends, or relatives, or anybody that knows her—”
“Oh, yes she has,” said Helen, laughing.
“What do you mean?” inquired Mary Cox, suspiciously.
“We saw somebody on the boat coming over to Portageton that knew Miss Picolet.”
“Oh, Helen!” ejaculated Ruth, warningly.
But it was too late, Mary Cox wanted to know what Helen meant, and the story of the fat man who had played the harp in the boat orchestra, and who had frightened the French teacher, and had afterward talked so earnestly with her on the dock, all came out in explanation. The Junior listened with a quiet but unpleasant smile upon her face.
“That’s just what we’ve always thought about Miss Picolet,” she said. “Her people must be dreadfully common. Friends with a ruffian who plays a harp on a steamboat for his living! Well!”
“Perhaps he is no relative or friend of hers,” suggested Ruth, timidly. “Indeed, she seemed to be afraid of him.”
“He’s mixed up in her private affairs, at least,” said Mary, significantly. “I never could bear Miss Picolet!”
Ruth was very sorry that Helen had happened upon this unfortunate subject. But her chum failed to see the significance of it, and the girl from the Red Mill had no opportunity of warning Helen. Mary Cox, too, was most friendly, and it seemed ungrateful to be anything but frank and pleasant with her. Not many big girls (so thought both Ruth and Helen) would have put themselves out to walk up to Briarwood Hall with two Infants and their baggage.
Through breaks in the cedar grove the girls began to catch glimpses of the brown old buildings of Briarwood Hall. Ivy masked the entire end of one of the buildings, and even ran up the chimneys. It had been cut away from the windows, and they showed brilliantly now with the descending sun shining redly upon them.
“It’s a beautiful old place, Helen,” sighed Ruth.
“I believe you!” agreed her chum, enthusiastically.
“It was originally a great manor house. That was the first building where the tower is,” said Mary Cox, as they came out at last upon the more open lawn that gave approach to this side of the collection of buildings, which had been more recently built than the main house. They were built around a rectangular piece of turf called the campus. This, however, the newcomers discovered later, for they came up in the rear of the particular dormitory building in which Mary declared their room was situated.
“You can go to the office afterwards,” she explained, kindly. “You’ll want to wash and fix up a little after traveling so far. It always makes one so dirty.”
“This is a whole lot better than the way poor Tom was received at his school; isn’t it?” whispered Helen, tucking her arm in Ruth’s as they came to the steps of the building.
Ruth nodded. But there were so many new things to see that Ruth had few words to spare. There were plenty of girls in sight now. It seemed to the girl from the Red Mill as though there were hundreds of them. Short girls, tall girls, thin girls, plump girls—and the very plumpest girl of her age that Ruth had ever seen, stood right at the top of the steps. She had a pretty, pink, doll-like face which was perpetually a-smile. Whereas some of the girls—especially the older ones—stared rather haughtily at the two Infants, this fat girl welcomed them with a broadening smile.
“Hello, Heavy,” said Mary Cox, laughing. “It must be close to supper bell, for you’re all ready, I see.”
“No,” said the stout girl. “There’s an hour yet. Are these the two?” she added, nodding at Ruth and Helen.
“I always get what I go after,” Ruth heard Mary say, as they whisked in at the door.
In the hall a quiet, pleasant-faced woman in cap and apron met them.
“This is Helen Cameron and Ruth Fielding, Miss Scrimp,” said Mary. “Miss Scrimp is matron of our dormitory, girls. I am going up, Miss Scrimp, and I’ll show them to their duet.”
“Very well, Miss Cox,” said the woman, producing two keys, one of which she handed to each of the chums. “Be ready for the bell, girls. You can see Mrs. Tellingham after supper.”
Ruth stopped to thank her, but Mary swept Helen on with her up the broad stairway. The room the chums were to occupy (Mr. Cameron had made this arrangement for them) was up this first flight only, but was at the other end of the building, overlooking the campus. It seemed a long walk down the corridor. Some of the doors stood open, and more girls looked out at them curiously as they pursued their way.
Mary was talking in a low voice to Helen now, and Ruth could not hear what she said. But when they stopped at the end of the corridor, and Helen fitted her key into the lock of the door, she said:
“We’d be delighted, Miss Cox. Oh, yes! Ruth and I will both come.”
Mary went away whistling and they heard her laughing and talking with other girls who had come out into the corridor before the chums were well in their own room. And what a delightful place it seemed to the two girls, when they entered! Not so small, either. There were two single beds, two dressing tables, running water in a bowl, two closets and two chairs—all this at one end of the room. At the other end was a good-sized table to work at, chairs, a couch, and two sets of shelves for their books. There were two broad windows with wide seats under them, too.
“Isn’t it just scrumptious?” cried Helen, hugging Ruth in her delight. “And just think—it’s our very own! Oh, Ruthie! won’t we just have good times here?”
Ruth was quite as delighted, if she was not so volubly enthusiastic as Helen. It was a much nicer room, of course, than the girl from the Red Mill had ever had before. Her tiny little chamber at the Red Mill was nothing like this.
The girls removed such marks of travel as they could and freshened their dress as well as possible. Their trunks would not arrive at the school until morning, they knew; but they had brought their toilet articles in their bags. These made some display—on Helen’s dresser, at least. But when their little possessions came they could make the room look more “homey.”
Barely had they arranged their hair when a gentle rap sounded at the door.
“Perhaps that’s Miss Cox again,” said Helen. “Isn’t she nice, Ruth?”
Her friend had no time to reply before opening the door to the visitor. It was not Miss Cox, but Ruth immediately recognized the tall girl whom Mary Cox had addressed as Madge Steele. She came in with a frank smile and her hand held out.
“I didn’t know you were going to come to my corridor,” she said, frankly. “Which of you is Miss Fielding, and which is Miss Cameron?”
It made the chums feel really grown up to be called “Miss,” and they liked this pretty girl at once. Ruth explained their identity as she shook hands. Helen was quite as warmly greeted.
“You will like Briarwood,” said Madge Steele. “I know you will. I understand you will enter the Junior classes. I have just entered the Senior grade this year. There are lots of nice girls on this corridor. I’ll be glad to introduce you after supper.”
�
�We have not been to the office yet,” said Ruth. “I believe that is customary?”
“Oh, you must see the Preceptress. She’s just as nice as she can be, is Mrs. Tellingham. You’ll see her right after supper?”
“I presume so,” Ruth said.
“Then, I tell you what,” said Madge. “I’ll wait for you and take you to the Forward Club afterwards. We have an open meeting this evening. Mrs. Tellingham will be there—she is a member, you know—so are the other teachers. We try to make all the new girls feel at home.”
She nodded to them both brightly and went out. Ruth turned to her chum with a smile.
“Isn’t that nice of her, Helen?” she said. “We are getting on famously— Why, Helen! what’s the matter?” she cried.
Helen’s countenance was clouded indeed. She shook her head obstinately.
“We can’t go with her, Ruth,” she declared.
“Can’t go with her?”
“No.”
“Why not, pray?” asked Ruth, much puzzled.
“We can’t go to that Forward Club,” said Helen, more emphatically.
“Why, my dear!” exclaimed Ruth. “Of course we must. We haven’t got to join it. Maybe they wouldn’t ask us to join it, anyway. You see, it’s patronized by the teachers and the Preceptress herself. We’ll be sure to meet the very nicest girls.”
“That doesn’t follow,” said Helen, somewhat stubbornly. “Anyway, we can’t go, Ruth.”
“But I don’t understand, dear,” said the puzzled Ruth.
“Why, don’t you see?” exclaimed Helen, with some exasperation. “I told Miss Cox we’d go with her.”
“Go where?”
“To her club. They hold a meeting this evening, too. You know, she said there was rivalry between the two big school clubs. Hers is the Upedes.”
“Oh! the Up and Doings,” laughed Ruth. “I remember.”
The Third Girl Detective Page 41