Hope Benham Part 21

"Course I am, because she knows just how; and so her way's better than mine," was the innocent answer to this.

"And I like _my_ way best sometimes, and take it," returned Dorothea, with another disagreeable laugh.

Kate understood perfectly well that these flings were aimed at her, and not at little Lily Chester; but she was determined to take no notice of them.

Dorothea, however, in spite of this sudden outburst of rancor, seemed to be in excellent spirits, and laughed and talked with one and another of the girls with even more than her usual volubility. Arrived at the Park, however, her spirits seemed to flag. Kate, who had caught her quick, searching glance across the pond, thought at once: "She is disappointed in not finding somebody here that she expected. I wonder if it is Raymond Armitage?" But just at that moment a shrill halloo reached Kate, and wheeling about she saw Peter Van Loon, with her brother Schuyler and little Johnny, skating down the ice towards her, and Dorothea and her affairs vanished from her mind. It was some time later that she was curiously recalled to her, by Peter Van Loon suddenly exclaiming, "h.e.l.lo, there's Armitage now, going off with the daffodil girl!"

"The daffodil girl!" What did he mean? Kate followed the direction of Peter's eyes, and saw Raymond Armitage with Dorothea, who had a lot of daffodils stuck in her belt,--a fresh offering, evidently, from her escort.

"But why do you call her the 'daffodil girl?'" asked Kate, wonderingly.

"Oh, you know she had such a lot of them when I first saw her--and with the yellow gown--she looked all daffodils, and I didn't know her name then."

"And so you called her 'the daffodil girl;'" and Kate laughed: this was so like Peter.

"Yes; so I called her the 'daffodil girl,'" a.s.sented Peter, smiling a little at Kate's laugh.

The pond by this time had become pretty well covered with skaters, and it was not easy to keep any one in view; but Dorothea was tall, and for a while the nodding plumes in her hat were distinctly visible to Kate and her companion, as they held on their way; but presently the nodding plumes turned in another direction, and they lost sight of them, and out of sight was out of mind again. In the mean time Hope, with Schuyler Van der Berg and little Johnny, was coursing about in the merriest manner, little Johnny proudly showing Hope how to use a hocky stick on the ice.

In this absorbing occupation the two approached the spot where some of the attendants and chaperons of the different parties were made comfortable; and as they did so, Hope, to her surprise, saw Dorothea Dering leaving the ice in company with Raymond Armitage.

What did this mean? Dorothea was always the last one to leave the ice.

But there was Miss Stephens--Miss Stephens would know what it meant; and skating up to her, Hope asked the question, and was told, in Miss Stephens's placid, easy way, that Miss Dering had got tired of skating, and Miss Bessie Armitage and her brother, who were just leaving, had taken charge of her to Miss Marr's.

Dorothea tired of skating at this early hour? Why, they had but just begun! And where was Bessie? Miss Stephens had said, "Miss Bessie Armitage and her brother;" and she, Hope, had only seen the brother, Raymond Armitage. Perhaps, however, Bessie had gone on ahead; but--but--and a whole host of suppositions came crowding into Hope's mind. If it had been any other of the girls, none of these suppositions would have arisen. If Myra Donaldson or Anna Fleming had confessed to being tired, and had given out that she was going home under the escort of Bessie Armitage and her brother, who would have thought but that it was the most natural and proper thing in the world, and who--_who_ would have thought of questioning the statement as it stood? But Dorothea, with her little plots and plans, had clearly shown herself another person entirely, and it was little wonder that Hope, under the circ.u.mstances, should suspect further plotting and planning.

"What is it,--what's up?" asked ten-year-old Johnny, as his companion suddenly forgot all interest in the hockey stick, and stood balancing herself on her skates, with a puzzled frown drawing her brows together.

For answer, Hope turned about with a "I don't know, Johnny, but we'll go and find Kate. I want to ask her something."

"All right;" and Johnny struck out to the left, where he saw his sister's Scotch skating-cap, with its glittering aigrette, shining in the sun.

"Tired of skating? Gone home?" cried Kate, when Hope told her story. "I don't believe it! Schuyler!"

"Oh, I wouldn't!" expostulated Hope.

"Yes, I'm going to ask Schuyler--I want to know--Schuyler, did Raymond Armitage come out in the same car with you?"

"Part way, but he left the car at Madison Square; he had ordered some theatre seats, and he stopped at the theatre to see if they were all right."

"Oh, and then he came on here to meet Bessie?"

"Bessie?"

"Yes; funny, though, I haven't seen her. Have _you_ seen her?"

"No."

"And yet Hope says that Miss Stephens told her that Dorothea had got tired of skating, and gone home under the escort of Bessie Armitage and her brother."

"Miss Stephens?"

"Yes, Miss Stephens, one of the under-teachers, who is blind and deaf about some things,--a good, dear stupid, who thinks everybody is a lamb, and Raymond Armitage the Prince of Lambs, I suppose, and like the father of his country, and cannot tell a lie, and--"

"But perhaps Bessie was just ahead, and Miss Stephens _did_ see her,"

put in Hope.

"And didn't take her for granted," scoffed Kate. Then, as she caught a look that her brother and Peter exchanged, she cried,--

"What is it? Peter!" bringing one little skate-clad foot down on the ice with an emphasis that sent out a shower of sparkles, "tell me instantly what you know. Don't you see, you two boys, that it's for the credit of the school,--of dear Miss Marr, of Dorothea (silly goose that she is), and all the rest of us,--that this kind of thing shall be nipped in the bud? Don't you see that you _ought_ to tell what you know, that some of us can stop the foolishness, and save Dorothea from being sent home?"

"Come now, you don't mean that;" and Peter stopped short in that odd way of his.

"Yes, I do mean that Miss Marr would send Dorothea straight home if she heard of her going off for a lark with Raymond Armitage. She says at the start that her school is neither an infant school nor a reform school, and if she finds that girls of fifteen and sixteen don't know how to behave like ladies in the ordinary ways of good manners, they are not the kind of girls she wants in her house, and so she sends them out of it. There isn't any nagging or any little punishments. She advises us and talks to us in a nice friendly way at the beginning, and sometimes later; but she lets a girl alone enough to find out just what she is, and _then_, when she finds out that the girl has faults and habits that may injure the other girls, she won't have her in her school; and so now I want you to tell us--Hope and me--what you know about this going off with Raymond Armitage, so that--"

"You may go and tell Miss Marr, and have her pack the girl off home."

"Schuyler!"

"Oh, well, I didn't mean exactly that, of course; but what _do_ you propose to do?"

"Stop the foolishness, whatever it is, that may be going on."

"Well, after what you told me the other day of your undertaking in that line with this particular party, I shouldn't think you'd attempt anything further with her."

"But somebody must do it. I don't like Dorothea, I didn't from the first; but I want her to have another chance, and I do so hate to have things come to the pa.s.s of her being expelled; it would be perfectly horrid for all of us. But we're only wasting time if you won't help us by telling--"

"But what is it you want to know?"

"What _you_ know; in the first place, if Ray Armitage said that he was coming here to meet his sister, and if he _expected_ her to be here?"

"Well, no; he didn't say anything about his sister."

"Did he say anything about Dorothea?"

"Yes."

"That he was coming here to meet _her_?"

"Yes."

"And that he was going to take _her_ with him this afternoon to the matinee?"

"Yes."

"Then, oh, Schuyler, you _must_ come with me down to the Madison Square Theatre and head them off!"

"Head them off! They've got there by this time."