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

"Helen! Oh, I hope so, Mrs. Tellingham!" cried Ruth, in great distress. "I am sure I love her just the same – and always shall."

"But she evidently finds her friends among the Upedes. Why did she not join this new society that you have started?"

"I – I did not mean to start it without her," stammered Ruth. "It was really only my suggestion. The other Infants took it up – "

"But you named it?"

"I did suggest the name," admitted Ruth.

"And you did not join the Up and Doing Club with your chum."

"No, Mrs. Tellingham. Nor did I join the F. C.'s. I did not like the manner in which both societies went about making converts. I didn't like it the very first day we came."

"Miss Picolet, your French teacher, told me something about Mary Cox meeting the stage and getting hold of you two girls before you had reached Briarwood at all."

"Yes, ma'am."

"By the way," said the Preceptress, her brow clouding again and the stern look coming back into her face that had rested on it when Ruth had first entered the room, "you had met Miss Picolet before you arrived at the school?"

"She spoke to us in the stage – yes, ma'am."

"But before that – you had seen her?"

"Ye-es, ma'am," said Ruth, slowly, beginning to suspect that Mrs. Tellingham's curiosity was no idle matter.

"Where?"

"On the Lanawaxa– the boat coming down the lake, Mrs. Tellingham."

"Miss Picolet was alone aboard the boat?"

Ruth signified that she was.

"Did you see her speaking with anybody?"

"We saw a man speak to her. He was one of the musicians. He frightened Miss Picolet. Afterward we saw that he had followed her out upon the wharf. He was a big man who played a harp."

"And you told this to your school-fellows after you became acquainted here?"

Mrs. Tellingham spoke very sternly indeed, and her gaze never left Ruth's face. The girl from the Red Mill hesitated but an instant. She had never spoken of the man and Miss Picolet to anybody save Helen; but she knew that her chum must have told all the particulars to Mary Cox.

"I – I believe we did mention it to some of the girls. It impressed us as peculiar – especially as we did not know who Miss Picolet was until after we were in the stage-coach with her."

"Then you are sure you have not been one who has circulated stories among the girls about Miss Picolet – derogatory to her, I mean?"

"Oh, Mrs. Tellingham! Never!" cried Ruth, earnestly.

"Do you know anything about this silly story I hear whispered that the marble harp out there on the fountain was heard to play the night you and Miss Cameron arrived here?"

"Oh!" ejaculated Ruth.

"I see you know about it. Did you hear the sound?"

"Ye-es, ma'am," admitted Ruth.

"I will not ask you under what circumstances you heard it; but I do ask if you have any knowledge of any fact that might explain the mystery?"

Ruth was silent for several moments. She was greatly worried; yet she could understand how this whole matter had come to Mrs. Tellingham's knowledge. Mary Cox, angry at Miss Picolet, had tried to defame her in the mind of the Preceptress.

Now, what Ruth knew was very little indeed. What she suspected regarding a meeting between the French teacher and the man with the harp, at the campus fountain, was an entirely different matter. But Mrs. Tellingham had put her question so that Ruth did not have to tell her suspicions.

"I really know nothing about it, Mrs. Tellingham," she said, finally.

"That is all. I do not believe you – or Miss Cameron – would willingly malign an innocent person. I have known Miss Picolet some time, and I respect her. If she has a secret sorrow, I respect it. I do not think it is nice to make Miss Picolet's private affairs a subject for remark by the school.

"Now, we will leave that. Sound Miss Cameron about this Mercy Curtis. If you girls will take her in, she shall come on trial. It lies with you, and your roommate, Miss Fielding. Come to me after chapel to-morrow and tell me what you have decided."

And so Ruth was dismissed.

CHAPTER XIX

THE TRIUMVIRATE

Mercy Curtis came in a week. For Helen of course was only too delighted to fall in with Mrs. Tellingham's suggestion. Duet Number 2, West Dormitory, was amply large enough for three, and Ruth gave up her bed to the cripple and slept on a couch. Helen herself could not do too much for the comfort of the newcomer.

Dr. Davidson and Dr. Cranfew came with her; but really the lame girl bore the journey remarkably well. And how different she looked from the thin, peaked girl that Ruth and Helen remembered!

"Oh, you didn't expect to see so much flesh on my bones; did you?" said Mercy, noting their surprise, and being just as sharp and choppy in her observations as ever. "But I'm getting wickedly and scandalously fat. And I don't often have to repeat Aunt Alviry's song of 'Oh, my back and oh, my bones!'"

Mercy went to bed on her arrival. But the next day she got about in the room very nicely with the aid of two canes. The handsome ebony crutches she saved for "Sunday-Best."

Ruth arranged a meeting of the Sweetbriars to welcome the cripple, and Mercy seemed really to enjoy having so many girls of her own age about her. Helen did not bring in many members of the Upedes; indeed, just then they all seemed to keep away from Duet Two, and none of them spoke to Ruth. That is, none save Jennie Stone. The fat girl was altogether too good-natured – and really too kind at heart – to treat Ruth Fielding as Jennie's roommates did.

"They say you went and told Picolet we were going to have the party in your room," Heavy said to Ruth, frankly, "and that's how you got out of it so easily. But I tell them that's all nonsense, you know. If you'd wanted to make us trouble, you would have let Helen have the party in our room, as she wanted to, and so you could have stayed home and not been in it at all."

"As she wanted to?" repeated Ruth, slowly. "Did Helen first plan to have the supper in your quartette?"

"Of course she did. It was strictly a Upede affair – or would have been if you hadn't been in it. But you're a good little thing, Ruth Fielding, and I tell them you never in this world told Picolet."

"I did not indeed, Jennie," said Ruth, sadly.

"Well, you couldn't make The Fox believe that. She's sure about it, you see," the stout girl said. "When Mary Cox wants to be mean, she can be, now I tell you!"

Indeed, Heavy was not like the other three girls in the next room. Mary, Belle and Lluella never looked at Ruth if they could help it, and never spoke to her. Ruth was not so much hurt over losing such girls for friends, for she could not honestly say she had liked them at the start; but that they should so misjudge and injure her was another matter.

She said nothing to Helen about all this; and Helen was as firmly convinced that Mary Cox and the other Upedes were jolly girls, as ever. Indeed, they were jolly enough; most of their larks were innocent fun, too. But it was a fact that most of those girls who received extra tasks during those first few weeks of the half belonged to the Up and Doing Club.

That Helen escaped punishment was more by good fortune than anything else. In the study, however, she and Ruth and Mercy had many merry times. Mercy kept both the other girls up to their school tasks, for all lessons seemed to come easy to the lame girl and she helped her two friends not a little in the preparation of their own.