Brenda's Bargain Part 11

"'When a spring lock that lay in ambush there Fastened her down forever.'

There, that's the last of that Jinerva poem; I couldn't help remembering it; I read it over several times."

"Oh, Haleema, and we're fastened in with a spring lock."

"Oh, we'll get out all right," said Haleema cheerfully; "'where there's a will, there's a way.'"

While she spoke she was moving about the closet.

"I wouldn't meddle any more; if you hadn't meddled with that trunk we wouldn't be in here now."

"I'm not meddling," she replied angrily, "I'm trying to find something."

Her search continued for some time, and at last the others heard an exclamation of satisfaction.

"What is it?" asked Concetta. "What have you found?"

"A stick," responded Haleema. "Do you know, I believe that I can break that window."

As she spoke she stood on tiptoe, and reached toward the transom. But, alas! _she_ was too short, and the stick was too short, and with all her efforts she could not reach the gla.s.s.

"We could not get out through that window," said Concetta scornfully.

"We couldn't get out through that window, so what is the good of trying?"

"Oh, I didn't mean to get out through the window, but if I break the gla.s.s we can have more air. We won't smother to death."

At the suggestion of smothering, although Haleema had p.r.o.nounced it an unlikely happening, Inez began to cry.

"Don't be a baby," said the little Syrian scornfully. "I guess there's more than one way of catching a bird, even if you can't put salt on his tail," from which it may be seen that Haleema was well on the way to becoming a good Yankee, since her proverbs were not strictly Oriental.

How long the time seemed! The light from the other room hardly showed through the transom. Though they could move about in the closet, their positions were naturally cramped. The air grew closer and warmer, and though they were in no danger of suffocation, they were becoming drowsy from the closeness and warmth.

Haleema strained her ears to hear any one who should pa.s.s near, yet even when she noted a distant step she realized that it would be hard to make herself heard. Still the three girls kicked on the door, and sang at the top of their voices, but in vain.

At last Haleema grew desperate.

"There's just one thing I can do," she said, "and I'll do it."

Thereupon she again seized the stick, and telling the others to go close up to the corners, she threw it toward the transom. The first time it fell back and hit her on the nose, the second time it merely grazed the wall beside the gla.s.s, the third time it touched the gla.s.s without breaking it.

"There," said Haleema, "I'm sure that I can do it," and with one mighty effort she took aim again, and the stick crashed through the gla.s.s. Most of the pieces went outside, but a few bits fell into the closet, and one of these scratched Haleema's forehead. In her triumph at accomplishing her end she did not mind the injury.

"There! you can come out of the corner. We'll get plenty of air from the room, and if any one should be pa.s.sing, why, it will be easier to hear us. Sing, Concetta, at the top of your voice."

"I'm too tired," said Concetta crossly, "and dreadful hungry. I wish you'd have let that trunk alone, Haleema; that's what made all the trouble."

So the time dragged on, and at length Concetta, though she never would admit it, fell asleep. Haleema kept herself awake by telling wonderful stories--some of them fairy tales, and some of them stories of adventures that she professed to have pa.s.sed through.

At last even her lively tongue was quiet, and she had given up kicking against the door, as a useless expenditure of energy.

In the meantime the absence of the three girls had become the subject of conjecture on the part of the others downstairs. No one apparently had noticed when they left the gymnasium, though Nellie thought that she had seen them on their way to the street floor.

"Perhaps they've just gone off for fun. Haleema's always up to some mischief."

"They may have run off for good, like Mary Murphy."

"Oh, no, there's no danger; that ain't likely. They know which side their bread's b.u.t.tered on."

The three vacant places troubled Angelina as she sat at the end of the table opposite Miss Dreen.

"If I hadn't been away, they wouldn't have dared go off."

Anstiss, to whom at last they applied for advice, was uncertain what they ought to do. She was sorry that this was the evening that Pamela and Julia and Miss South had taken to dine with Lois in Newton. It would be late when they returned, and she did not like the responsibility that had fallen upon her.

While the discussion was going on, many thoughts were pa.s.sing through Gretchen's mind. Not until tea-time had she learned of the disappearance of her schoolmates, and as she was not very quick-witted, she had not at first connected them with the end room. When she did recall Concetta's desire to explore it, she hesitated about speaking. In the first place, if Concetta heard that she had told of her previous efforts to pry into the mysteries of the trunks, she would surely take vengeance, especially if at the present time she happened not to be there. If she had been shut up in the room all this time, or in a trunk--and then the story of Ginevra came into Gretchen's mind, and she was half afraid to suggest that the end room be explored.

So positive, however, was Angelina that the girls had run away, or at least had taken advantage of Miss South's absence to spend the evening out, that no one suggested exploring the house thoroughly. Anstiss herself had gone to the room of each girl to a.s.sure herself that they were not in one of them, and had sat herself down to her hour's reading when she noticed that Gretchen was softly weeping.

"Why, what is the matter, child?" she asked, and Gretchen, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief that left a little dark streak, looked up for a moment, and then hung down her head without answering.

"Tell her," said Nellie, who sat beside her, with a nudge that made Gretchen wriggle her shoulders. To save herself, perhaps, from a second such demonstration, when Anstiss repeated her question Gretchen replied:

"I'm afraid that they're locked up in the attic."

"Who? Haleema and the other two?"

Anstiss had already started toward the door.

"Yes'm; I went upstairs just before you came in and I thought I heard a little noise from the end room."

"Then why didn't you look in? Was the door locked?"

"I don't know; I didn't try it. I was afraid that they might be dead."

"But you said that you heard a noise. Oh, Gretchen, you are a silly girl."

As she spoke Anstiss was wondering why she herself had not thought of the end room, since every corner of the house ought to have been thoroughly explored.

Then she ran upstairs to the top of the house, and then down the two or three steps to the end room, with five girls and Fidessa following her closely. She felt sure that she heard a noise from the direction of the room; nor was she wrong. Haleema, who had managed to keep herself awake amid all the discomforts of her position, was shouting at the top of her rather weak lungs. Yet she had made herself heard.

A glance around the small room and the sight of the broken gla.s.s on the floor outside showed Anstiss that the girls were in the closet. But here was a new difficulty. The door had shut with a spring that had locked it, and no one knew where the key could be found.

The fact, however, that they were discovered had restored the spirits of the girls inside the closet.

"Yes, we are starved," they admitted when questioned.

"Let's get a ladder, and send down a basket by a rope over the door,"

suggested Angelina; and before any one could object she had gone down to the kitchen. When she returned with a small basket containing three oranges and some slices of bread and b.u.t.ter, Anstiss praised her warmly for bringing just the right things. In her absence a ladder had been brought from a corner of the gymnasium, and it was very little work to lower the basket over the transom to the hungry girls within.