Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall Part 13

Had he followed her to Briarwood Hall? Was he an enemy who plagued the little French teacher--perhaps blackmailed her?

These were the various ideas revolving in Ruth Fielding's head. And they revolved until the girl fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, and they troubled her sleep all through the remainder of the night. For that the man with the harp and Miss Picolet had a rendezvous behind the marble figure on the campus fountain was the sum and substance of the conclusion which Ruth had come to.

In the morning Ruth only mentioned these suppositions to Helen, but discussed them not at all with the other girls, her new school-fellows.

Indeed, those girls who had set out to haze the two Infants, and had been frightened by the manifestation of the sounding harp upon the campus, were not likely to broach the subject to Ruth or Helen, either.

For they had intended to surround their raid upon the new-comers' peace of mind with more or less secrecy.

However, sixteen frightened girls (without counting Ruth and Helen) could not be expected to keep such a mystery as this a secret among themselves. That the marble harp had been sounded--that the ghost of the campus had returned to haunt the school--was known among the students of Briarwood Hall before breakfast time. Jennie Stone was quite full of it, although Ruth knew from the unimpeachable testimony of Jennie's nose that _she_ was not among the hazers; and the sounding of the mysterious harp-strings in the middle of the night really endangered Heavy's appet.i.te for breakfast.

The members of the Upedes who had been so pleasant with them at the evening meeting seemed rather chary of speaking to Ruth and Helen how; and, anyway, the chums had enough to do to get their boxes unpacked and their keepsakes set about the room, and to complete various housekeeping arrangements. They enjoyed setting up their "goods and chattels" quite as much as they expected to; and really their school life began quite pleasantly despite the excitement and misunderstanding on the first night of their arrival.

If the crowd that Ruth was so sure had hazed them were slow about attending on the two Infants in the West Dormitory (as their building was called) there were plenty of other nice girls who looked into the duet in a friendly way, or who spoke to Ruth and Helen on the campus, or in the dining room. Miss Polk and Madge Steele were not the only Seniors who showed the chums some attention, either; and Ruth and Helen began secretly to count the little b.u.t.tons marked "F. C." which they saw, as compared with the few stars bearing the intertwined "U" and "D"

of the Upedes.

Just the same, Helen Cameron's leaning toward the lively group or girls in their house who had (it seemed) formed their club in protest against the Forward Club, was still marked. The friends heard that the last named a.s.sociation was governed by the Preceptress and teachers almost entirely. That it was "poky" and "stuffy." That some girls (not altogether those who formed the membership of the Upedes) considered it "toadying" to join the Forward Club. And on this second day Ruth and Helen saw that the rivalry for membership between the clubs was very keen indeed. A girl couldn't have friends among the members of both the F. C.'s and the Upedes--that was plain.

Many new girls arrived on this day--mostly from the Lumberton direction. That was another reason, perhaps, why Ruth and Helen were shown so little attention by the quartette of girls next door o them.

They were all busy--even Heavy herself--in herding the new girls whom they had entangled in the tentacles of the Upedes. The chums found themselves untroubled by the F. C.'s; it seemed to be a settled fact among the girls that Ruth and Helen were pledged to the Upedes.

"But we are _not_," Ruth Fielding said, to her friend. "I don't like this way of doing business at all, Helen--do you?"

"Well--but what does it matter?" queried Helen, pouting. "We want to get in with a lively set; don't we? I'm sure the Upedes are nice girls."

"I don't like the leadership of them," said Ruth, frankly.

"Miss c.o.x?"

"Miss c.o.x--exactly," said the girl from the Red Mill.

"Oh--well--she isn't everything," cried Helen.

"She comes pretty near being the boss of that club--you can see that.

Now, the question is, do we want to be bossed by a girl like her?"

"Then, do you want to be under the noses of the teachers, and toadying to them all the time?" cried Helen.

"If that is what is meant by belonging to the Forward Club, I certainly do not," admitted Ruth.

"Then I don't see but you will have to start a secret society of your own," declared Helen, laughing somewhat ruefully.

"And perhaps _that_ wouldn't be such a bad idea," returned Ruth, slowly. "I understand that there are nearly thirty new girls coming to Briarwood this half who will enter the Junior cla.s.ses. Of course, the Primary pupils don't count. I talked with a couple of them at dinner.

They feel just as I do about it--there is too much pulling and hauling about these societies. They are not sure that they wish to belong to either the Upedes or the F. C.'s."

"But just think!" wailed Helen. "How much fun we would be cut out of!

We wouldn't have any friends----"

"That's nonsense. At least, if the whole of us thirty Infants, as they call us, flocked together by ourselves, why wouldn't we have plenty of society? I'm not so sure that it wouldn't be a good idea to suggest it to the others."

"Oh, my! would you dare?" gasped Helen. "And we've only just arrived ourselves?"

"Self-protection is the first selfish law of nature," paraphrased Ruth, smiling; "and I'm not sure that it's a bad idea to be selfish on such an occasion."

"You'd just make yourself ridiculous," scoffed Helen. "To think of a crowd of freshies getting up an order--a secret society."

"In self-protection," laughed Ruth.

"I guess Mrs. Tellingham would have something to say about it, too,"

declared Helen.

It was not the subject of school clubs that was the burden of Ruth Fielding's thought for most of that day, however. Nor did the arrival of so many new scholars put the main idea in her mind aside. This troubling thought was of Miss Picolet and the sound of the harp on the campus at midnight. The absence of the French teacher from the dormitory, the connection of the little lady with the obese foreigner who played the harp on the _Lanawaxa_, and the sounding of harp-strings on the campus in the middle of the night, were all dovetailed together in Ruth Fielding's mind. She wondered what the mystery meant.

She saw Tony Foyle cleaning the campus lanterns during the day, and she stopped and spoke to him.

"I heard you tell Jennie Stone last night that you had to drive street musicians away from the school grounds, sir?" said Ruth, quietly. "Was there a man with a harp among them?"

"Sure an' there was," declared Tony, nodding. "And he was a sa.s.sy dago, at that! 'Tis well I'm a mon who kapes his temper, or 'twould ha' gone har-r-rd wid him."

"A big man, was he, Mr. Foyle?" asked Ruth.

"What had that to do wid it?" demanded the old man, belligerently.

"When the Foyles' dander is riz it ain't size that's goin' to stop wan o' that name from pitchin' into an' wallopin' the biggest felly that iver stepped. He was big," he added; "but I've seen bigger. Him an'

his red vest--and jabberin' like the foreign monkey he was. I'll show him!"

Ruth left Tony shaking his head and muttering angrily as he pursued his occupation. Ruth found herself deeply interested in the mystery of the campus; but if she had actually solved the problem of the sounding of the harp at midnight, the reason for the happening, and what really brought that remarkable manifestation about, was as deep a puzzle to her as before.

CHAPTER XIII

BEGINNINGS

Youth adapts itself easily and naturally to all change. Ruth Fielding and her chum, before that second evening at Briarwood Hall drew in, felt as though they had known the place for months and some of the girls all their lives. It was thus the most natural thing in the world to a.s.semble at meals when the school-bell tapped its summons, to stand while the grace was being said, to chatter and laugh with those at the table at which they sat, to speak and laugh with the waitresses, and with old Tony Foyle, and with Miss Scrimp, the matron of their house, and to bow respectfully to Miss Picolet, Miss Kennedy, the English teacher; Miss O'Hara, before whom Ruth and Helen would come in mathematics, and the other teachers as they learned their names.

Dr. Tellingham, although affording some little amus.e.m.e.nt for the pupils because of his personal peculiarities, was really considered by the girls in general a deeply learned man, and when he chanced to trot by a group of the students on the campus, in his stoop-shouldered, purblind way, their voices became hushed and they looked after him as though he really was all he pretended to be--or all he thought he was. He delved in histories--ate, slept, and seemed to draw the breath of his nostrils from histories. That the pamphlets and books he wrote were of trivial importance, and seldom if ever saw the light of print, was not made manifest to the Briarwood girls in general.

Ruth and Helen were not unpopular from the start. Helen was so pretty and so vivacious, that she was bound to gather around her almost at once those girls who were the more easily attracted by such a nature; while for Ruth's part, the little Primes found that she was both kind and loving. She did not snub the smaller girls who came to her for any help, and before this day was over (which was Friday) they began to steal into the chums' duet, in twos and threes, to talk with Ruth Fielding. It had been so at the school near the Red Mill, and Ruth was glad the little folk took to her.

Late in the afternoon the two friends from Cheslow went out to the main entrance of the grounds to meet Old Dolliver's stage from Seven Oaks.

It had been noised abroad that a whole _nursery_ of Infants was expected by that conveyance, and Mary c.o.x and Madge Steele, each with her respective committee, were in waiting to greet the new-comers on behalf of their separate societies.

"And we'll welcome them as fellow-infants," whispered Ruth to Helen.

"Let's hold a reception in our room this evening to all the newcomers.

What say, Helen?"

Her chum was a little doubtful as to the wisdom of this course. She did not like to offend their friends in the Upedes. Yet the suggestion attracted Helen, too.

"I suppose if we freshmen stick together we'll have a better time, after all," she agreed.