Back at School with the Tucker Twins Part 6

"Good for Nance!" I murmured, and knew no more until morning. I can't believe we had done anything so very wrong or we could not have slept so soundly.

The rising gong found us dead to the world and only the telephone call, three knocks on the wall, aroused us.

"Trouble ahead!" whispered Mary Flannagan, "there was some one snooping around last night after we were all in bed."

"Well, we can prove an alibi. Who was it?" I chattered through the 'phone. I had jumped out of bed and was huddled in the closet behind Dum's dress. The window was still up and the heat turned off.

"You sound scared! Do you think they will catch us?"

"Scared! Not a bit of it! I am just cold. Of course, they won't catch us,--thanks to having abolished the honour system," and I hung up the receiver and commenced the Herculean task of getting Tweedles out of bed.

"Get up!" I urged, pulling the cover off of first one then the other. "I don't see what you would have done without a roommate. I'd like to know who would wake you up."

Dee put her head under the pillow like an ostrich trying to evade pursuit and Dum curled up in a little ball like a big caterpillar when you tickle him with a piece of gra.s.s.

"Girls! Get up! I tell you Mary says there is some mischief brewing. We had better get up and be down to breakfast in time with smiling morning faces or Miss Plympton will know who was up late feasting. Me for a cold bath!"

"Me, too!" tweedled the twins, coming to life very rapidly.

A cold plunge and vigorous rubbing took off all traces of the night's dissipations, and as a finishing touch we all of us let our hair hang down our backs in plaits. Since the summer we had with one accord turned up our hair. We felt that it added dignity to our years; but now was no time for dignity but for great simplicity and innocence.

As the breakfast gong sounded, I am sure in all Virginia there could not be found five more demure maidens than tripped punctually into the dining room. Miss Plympton looked sharply up as we came in, but we felt we had disarmed her with the very sweet bows we gave her and the gentle "good mornings."

There was an air of repressed excitement running through the school. We were dying to ask what it was but felt that silence on our part was the only course for us to pursue. Certainly there were fifteen very shiny-eyed Juniors and ten very smug-looking ones. I whispered to Nancy Blair as I pa.s.sed her table on the way out:

"What's up?"

"I am not sure, but I do not believe they are on to our frolic."

"There is something else," declared Jean Rice, who sat next to her chum, Nancy. "The servants are in a great state of excitement over something.

I have had an oatmeal spoon and a b.u.t.ter knife spilled down my neck already and I see Miss Plympton's private cream pitcher has found its way to our table."

"Well, we will find out what is the matter in Chapel," I sighed, as I hurried up to my room to put it to some kind of rights. I wanted to get our dummies pulled to pieces, leaving no semblance of human beings. We had twenty minutes between breakfast and Chapel to make our beds and do what cleaning to our rooms we considered necessary to pa.s.s inspection. I tell you we cleaned that room with what Mammy Susan called "a lick and a promise." Our dummies we pulled to pieces and scattered their members to the four winds, like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, when the winged monkeys got him. The telephone we concealed even more carefully than usual, draping a sweater over it and smoothing out Dum's dress so no suspicious wrinkle remained.

"We weren't in our beds very long, so let's spread 'em," said Dee, suiting the action to the word and pulling up her sheets in the most approved unhygienic manner. We swept the dirt under the rugs and with a few slaps of a dust rag on bureau, chairs and tables, and a careful lowering of the shade so the light came in sufficiently softened not to show the dust, we betook ourselves to Chapel as the gong sounded, quaking inwardly but with that "b.u.t.ter won't melt in my mouth"

expression we considered suitable for the occasion.

Miss Plympton was on the platform waiting for the teachers and pupils to a.s.semble. She had on a stiff, new, dark gray suit that fitted her like the paper on the wall and she was making chins so fast there was no keeping up with them.

"Looks like tin armor and I tell you she is ready for a joust, too!"

exclaimed Dum.

Without any warning at all, Miss Plympton opened the Bible at the tenth chapter of Nehemiah and began to read:

"'Now those that sealed were Nehemiah, the Tirshatha, the son of Hachaliah, and Zidkijah, Seraiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pashur, Amariah, Malchijah, Hattush, Shebaniah, Malluch, Harim, Meremoth, Obadiah, Daniel, Ginnethon, Baruch, Meshullam, Abijah, Mijamin, Maaziah, Bilgai, Shemaiah: these were the priests.'"

I heard a sharply intaken breath from Dee. I also noticed the shoulders of a girl a few seats ahead of me shaking ominously.

Miss Plympton proceeded: "'And the Levites: both Jeshua, the son of Azaniah, Binnui of the sons of Henadad, Kadmiel; And their brethren Shebaniah, Hodijah, Kelita, Pelaiah, Hanan, Micha, Rehob, Hashabiah, Zaccur, Sherebiah, Shebaniah, Hodijah, Bani, Beninu,'----"

Other shoulders were shaking and Dee buried her face in her hands. There was an unmistakable snort from a dignified Senior. One of the tiny little girls giggled outright and suddenly without any one knowing how it started, the whole school was in a roar.

Now it is not so difficult to come down on a few offenders, but when a whole school goes to pieces what is the one in command to do? It wasn't that there was anything so very humorous in the tenth chapter of Nehemiah, but the way Miss Plympton read it; the way she rattled off those impossible names with as much ease as she would have shown in calling the roll, the way she looked in her tight new suit,--just the way the whole school felt, anyhow--a kind of tense feeling that something was going to happen, made our risibles get the better of us.

Everything in the room rocked with laughter except Miss Plympton. She just made chins.

The teachers on the platform were as bad as the students. Miss Ball was completely overcome and the very dried-up instructor in mathematics had to be led off the platform in the last stages of hysterics. Margaret Sayre told me afterwards that she was very glad to do the leading as she herself was at the bursting point.

Miss Plympton looked at the giggling and roaring ma.s.s of girls and quietly went on reading in her hard even tones, her voice slightly raised, however: "'The chief of the people: Parosh, Pahath-moab, Elam, Zatthu, Bani, Bunni; Azgad, Bebai, Adonijah, Bigvai, Adin, Ater'----"

The laughter of some of the girls changed to weeping and about half the school had hysterics. Miss Plympton did not understand girls at all, but she understood them well enough to know that when once hysterics gets started in a crowd of girls there is no more stopping it than a stampede of wild cattle.

I hate sacrilege, but for the life of me I can't see why any one should think that any human being could get any good or spiritual strength for the day from listening to the tenth chapter of Nehemiah. I never heard of a school breaking out into hysterics over the twenty-third Psalm or the Sermon on the Mount. Why should not a suitable thing be chosen to read to young people?

Miss Plympton was furious, but whatever she said to the pupils, she would have to say to the teachers, so she held her peace and after making some hundred or so chins she had prayers and then a mild hymn.

The storm had subsided except for an occasional sniff. Some of the most hysterically inclined had been forced to leave the a.s.sembly room and these came sneaking back during the singing of the hymn. The Math teacher had to go to bed and we all with one accord blessed Sheribiah, Shebiniah, Hodijah, Bani, and Beninu.

CHAPTER VIII.

INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE.

"Keep your seats, young--ladies, I suppose I must call you. I have something to say to you." We thought it was coming and were glad to have it over with. "Something has occurred, very grave in its nature."

"Pshaw!" I thought. "Having a feast in the Gym is not so terribly grave." I had for the moment forgot entirely about the boys' escapade.

"Last night, Mr. Ryan, our night watchman, who faithfully keeps watch over the building while you are sleeping, was coming to his duties from the village where he lives when he was startled by an apparition. Three figures, garbed in white, came suddenly upon him out of the darkness.

This was just outside the school grounds and about five minutes after nine o'clock--immediately after your unmasking, I take it. Mr. Ryan was very startled, so much so that he turned and ran all the way back to the village and he declares that these figures ran after him. He says that he was able to note that two of them were tall and one quite short. The poor old man is very superst.i.tious and thinks they were ghosts, but we are too enlightened to believe such a thing. In fact, we have reason to believe we know the girls who perpetrated what, no doubt, they consider a joke, but to our minds it is nothing more than a cruel prank that none but unlady-like, ill-bred hoydens could be capable of." Here she paused and grasping firmly the last few superfluous chins that had formed above her collar, she resolutely pushed them back and resumed her discourse.

"I need hardly say on whom my suspicions have fallen--the fact of its having been two tall figures and one short one can mean only Mary Flannagan and the Tucker twins."

We sat electrified! Why Mary and the Tuckers any more than any other three girls in the school? Mary was certainly not the shortest girl in the school and the Tuckers were certainly not the tallest. It was so silly that I would have laughed aloud if I had not been too indignant.

Tweedles sat up very straight and sniffed the air like war horses ready for battle, while Mary Flannagan looked for all the world like a little Boston bull dog straining at his leash to get at the throat of some antagonist.

Now at this juncture a remarkable thing occurred when we consider Annie Pore's timidity. She stood up and with that clear wonderful voice, musical whether in speaking or singing, said:

"Miss Plympton, I am exactly the height of the Tuckers and Mary Flannagan is my intimate friend and roommate! I insist upon being held in exactly the same ridiculous suspicion that you have placed my three friends."

"I am a little shorter but will walk on my tip toes the rest of my life if it is necessary to prove that I was with the Tuckers and Mary Flannagan from the time of unmasking last night until we went to our room at ten!" I blurted out, springing to my feet.

I was very angry with the boys for getting us into this sc.r.a.pe, but since we were there, I was determined to stay with my friends. Of course it was Harvie and Wink and Shorty who had met old Mr. Ryan. They had left the building just before nine, and he, poor old thing, being of a naturally superst.i.tious turn of mind had come to the school earlier than usual, as he knew it was Hallowe'en and feared something might catch him. The boys saw he was scared and, boy-like, had given chase.

"What have you to say for yourself, Miss Flannagan?" said Miss Plympton, ignoring Annie and me as though we had never existed.

"Nothing but this: 'I deny the allegation and defy the alligator,'" said Mary, quoting Mrs. Malaprop with as much composure as she could muster.

"And you, Miss Caro--ginia Tucker?" she demanded, looking first at Dum and then at Dee and finally striking a medium course and looking between them.