Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall: or, Solving the Campus Mystery

Timid for herself, Ruth had begun to develop that side of her character which urged her to be bold for the general good. She appreciated keenly how awkward she had felt when she arrived at Briarwood the day before. Helen, although not lacking in kindliness, was less thoughtful than her chum; and she was actually less bold than her chum, too.

Ruth made it a point to see and speak with all the new scholars whom she could find, repeating her invitation for a meeting in her room. Whether Helen helped in this matter she did not know. Her chum was not enthusiastic in the task, that was certain. And indeed, when the hour came, after supper, Helen was closeted with Mary Cox in the quartette room next door to the chamber and study which she and Ruth Fielding shared together.

That Ruth felt more than a little hurt, it is unnecessary to say. She had felt the entering wedge between them within a few hours of their coming to the school. The Upedes were much more friendly to Helen than to herself, and Helen was vastly interested in Mary Cox, Belle Tingley, Lluella Fairfax, and some of the other livelier members of the Up and Doing Club.

But, after a while Helen strolled into her own room and mingled with the Infants who had there assembled. They had come almost to their full strength. There were no sessions of either the F. C.'s or the Upedes on this evening, and Miss Picolet, to whom Ruth had spoken about the little reception to be held in her room, approved of it. Helen was bound to be popular among any crowd of girls, for she was so gay and good-tempered. But when somebody broached the subject of school clubs, Ruth was surprised that Helen should at once talk boldly for the Upedes. She really urged their cause as though she was already a member.

"I am not at all sure that I wish to join either the Forwards or the Up and Doings," said Ruth, quietly, when one of the other Infants asked her what she intended doing.

"But you'll have no friends here – not among the Juniors and Seniors, at least – if you don't join some club!" Helen exclaimed.

"There are enough of us right here to found a society, I should say," laughed Ruth. "And we're all in the same boat, too."

"Yes!" agreed Sarah Fish, one of the Infants just arrived. "And what do these older girls really care about us? Very little, I am sure, except to strengthen their own clubs. I can see that," she continued, being a very practical, sensible girl, and downright in speech and manner. "Two of them came into our room at once – the girl they call The Fox, and Miss Steele. One argued for the Forwards and the other for the Up and Doings. I don't want either."

"I don't want to join either," broke in another girl, by name Phyllis Short. "I think it would be nicer for us Infants, as they call us, to keep together. And we're no younger than a good many of the Juniors!"

Ruth laughed. "We expect to take all that good-naturedly. But I don't like the idea of being driven into one society, or the other. And I don't mean to be," she said, emphatically.

"Hear! hear!" cried Miss Fish.

"Well, I don't think it will be nice at all," said Helen, in some heat, "to refuse to associate with the older girls here. I, for one, want to get into the real school society – "

"But suppose we start a club of our own?" interrupted the practical Sarah.

"Why, what could just a handful of new girls do in a society? It would look silly," cried Helen.

"We won't keep the older girls out of it, if they want to join," laughed Sarah.

"And there has to be a beginning to everything," rejoined Phyllis Short.

"I don't believe those Upedes have many more members than are right in this room to-night," said Ruth, quietly. "How many do we number here – twenty-six?"

"Twenty-six, counting your room-mate," said Sarah.

"Well, you can count her room-mate out," declared Helen, sharply. "I am not going to make myself a laughing-stock of the school by joining any baby society."

"Well," said Phyllis Short, calmly. "It's always nicer, I think, to be a big frog in a little puddle than to be an unrecognised croaker in a great, big pool."

Most of the girls laughed at that. And the suggestion of a separate club for the Infants seemed to be well received. Ruth, however, was very much troubled by Helen's attitude, and she would say no more beyond this:

"We will think of it. There is plenty of time. Only, those who feel as we do – "

"As you do!" snapped Helen.

"As I do, then, if you insist," said Ruth, bravely, "would better not pledge themselves to either the F. C.'s or the Upedes until we have talked this new idea over."

And with that the company broke up and the new girls went away to their rooms. But Helen and Ruth found a barrier raised between them that evening, and the latter sprinkled her pillow with a few quiet tears before she went to sleep.

CHAPTER XIV

THE SWEETBRIARS

Mail time!

Until Saturday morning Ruth and Helen had not realized how vital that hour was when the mail-bag came out from the Lumberton post office and the mail was distributed by one of the teachers into a series of pigeonholes in a tiny "office" built into the corridor at the dining-room door. The mail arrived during the breakfast hour. One could get her letters when she came out of the dining-room, and on this Saturday both Ruth and Helen had letters.

Miss Cramp, her old teacher, had written to Ruth very kindly. There was a letter, too, from Aunt Alvirah, addressed in her old-fashioned hand, and its contents shaky both as to spelling and grammar, but full of love for the girl who was so greatly missed at the Red Mill. Uncle Jabez had even declared the first night that it seemed as though there had been a death in the house, with Ruth gone.

Helen had several letters, but the one that delighted her most was from her twin brother.

"Although," she declared, in her usual sweet-tempered manner, "Tom's written it to both of us. Listen here, Ruthie!"

The new cadet at Seven Oaks began his letter: "Dead [Transcriber's note: Dear?] Sweetbriars," including Ruth as well as Helen in his friendly and brotherly effusion. He had been hazed with a vengeance on the first night of his arrival at the Academy; he had been chummed on a fellow who had already been half a year at the school and whose sister was a Senior at Briarwood; he had learned that lots of the older students at Seven Oaks were acquainted with the Seniors at Briarwood, and that there were certain times when the two schools intermingled socially.

"Dear old Tom!" exclaimed Helen. "Nice of him to call us 'Sweetbriars'; isn't it? I guess there's a good many thorns on this 'sweetbriar'; 'eh, Ruthie?" and she hugged and kissed her chum with sudden fierceness.

"And Tom says he can get permission to come over and see me some Saturday afternoon if Mrs. Tellingham will allow it. I'll have to get her to write to Major Paradell, who commands at Seven Oaks. My! it sounds just as though poor old Tom was in the army; doesn't it?" cried Helen.

"It will be nice to have him over," said Ruth, agreeing. "But I suppose we'll have to meet him in the office? Or can we walk out with our 'brother'?" and she laughed.

"We'll go to Triton Lake; Tom will take us," said Helen, decidedly.

"I guess Mrs. Tellingham will have something to say about that, my dear."

Helen seemed to have forgotten the little difficulty that had troubled her chum and herself the night before, and Ruth said nothing further about the Infants forming a society of their own. At least, she said nothing about it to Helen. But Sarah Fish and Phyllis Short, and some of the other Infants, seemed determined to keep the idea alive, and they all considered Ruth Fielding a prime mover in the conspiracy. It was noised abroad that neither the F. C.'s nor the Upedes were getting many new names enrolled for membership.

Saturday morning the remainder of the expected new girls arrived at Briarwood, and with then came the last of the older scholars, too. There was an assembly called for two o'clock which Mrs. Tellingham addressed. She welcomed the new-comers, greeted the returning pupils, and briefly sketched the plans for the school year then beginning. She was a quick, briskly-speaking woman, who impressed the most rattle-pated girl before her that she meant to be obeyed and that no wild prank would go unpunished.

"Proper amusement will be supplied in due time, young ladies. For the present we shall all have enough to do getting settled into our places. I have heard something regarding picnics and outings for the near future. Postpone all such junketing until we are pulling well together. And beware of demerits. Remember that ten of them, for whatever cause, will send a girl home from Briarwood immediately."

This about the picnics hit the Upedes. Ruth and Helen knew that they were planning just such amusements. Helen took this interference on Mrs. Tellingham's part quite to heart.

"Isn't it mean of her?" she asked of Ruth. "If it had been the Fussy Curls who wanted to go to Triton Lake, it would have been another matter. And – besides – I was going to write to Tom and see if he couldn't meet us there."

"Why, Helen; without asking Mrs. Tellingham?" cried Ruth.

"I suppose Tom and some of his chums could happen to go to Triton Lake the same day we went; couldn't they?" Helen asked, laughing. "Dear me, Ruthie! Don't you begin to act the Miss Prim – please! We'll have no fun at all if you do."

"But we don't want to make the bad beginning of getting Mrs. Tellingham and the teachers down on us right at the start," said Ruth, in a worried manner.

"I don't know but that you are a Miss Prim!" ejaculated Helen.

Ruth thought, probably, from her tone of voice, that Helen had heard some of her friends among the Upedes already apply that term to her, Ruth. But she said nothing – only shook her head. However, the girl from the Red Mill did her best to dodge any subject in the future that she thought might cause Helen to compare her unfavorably with the girls next door.

For Ruth loved her chum dearly – and loved her unselfishly, too. Helen and Tom had been so kind to her in the past – all through those miserable first weeks of her life at the Red Mill – that Ruth felt she could never be really angry with Helen. It only made her sorrowful to think that perhaps Helen, in this new and wider school life, might drift away from her.

The regular program of the working days of the school included prayers in the chapel before the girls separated for their various classes. These were held at nine o'clock. But on Sunday Ruth found that breakfast was an hour later than usual and that at ten o'clock several wagonettes, besides Old Dolliver's Ark, were in waiting to take those girls who wished to ride to the churches of the several denominations located in Lumberton. A teacher, or a matron, went in each vehicle, and if any of the girls preferred to walk in pleasant weather there was always a teacher to walk with them – for the distance was only a mile.