GLORIA
AT BOARDING SCHOOL

GLORIA AND TRIXY EXAMINED THE MYSTERIOUS PACKAGE.
Gloria at Boarding School. Frontispiece—([Page 38])

GLORIA
AT BOARDING SCHOOL

By
LILIAN GARIS

Author of “Gloria: A Girl and Her Dad,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

Made in the United States of America

Copyright, 1923, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP

CONTENTS

GLORIA
AT BOARDING SCHOOL

CHAPTER I
MIXED BAGGAGE

The dark haired girl, sitting on the cretonne couch, chuckled.

“So this is boarding school!”

No one heard her, the little clock on the corner shelf ticked away and never “let on,” for new girls coming to that room were no novelty to the clock. They came and went yearly, sometimes oftener, and what difference did it make that this one chuckled? Those who sighed, or even those who wept, always got over it in time. No doubt the dark haired girl would get over her rather cynical defiance of Miss Alton’s rules for lady-like deportment. Also, she might in time learn to sit on a chair properly.

Gloria Doane really felt defiant. Boarding school always represented restrictions to her inexperienced reasoning, and restrictions were never a part of her chosen schedule. A sense of freedom was necessary to her happiness.

At her Barbend home she scarcely respected the wildest coast storm, and often thought it a lark to help life guards shoot out their boats or rig up a buoy. But last year Gloria was “due” to go to this exclusive school and she had not done so. In fact, circumstances wove such a net about her that the meshes represented a most unusual story, told in the first volume of this series called, “Gloria: A Girl and Her Dad.” But now the net was flattened out, stretched to dry on regulation lines, and Gloria had emerged like a fairy mermaid, changed back to an earth maiden, and was doing such ordinary things as going to boarding school.

All this she pondered as voices roused her and a step near her door threatened invasion.

“Trixy!” she called lightly. The step halted.

“Did you get your trunk? It’s downstairs and you will want to change your dress before dinner, or maybe it’s supper,” surmised Trixy Travers, the girl from Sandford, who decided to come to Altmount because Gloria begged her to do so. Trixy was quite as fond of freedom as was Gloria, so, ultimately, they both decided “it wouldn’t kill them to try it for a year.” And there they were, ready to put the test to their resolve.

“Trunks,” murmured Gloria, indifferently. “I saw one that looked like mine——”

“In the first hall? Get that bean pole they call Sam, to lug it up for you before the others come in. Then we can dress in our prettiest and flabbergast the crowd.” A pulled face, quite unlike Trixy’s usual countenance, put a period to this threat.

“Brilliant idea. I’ll go straight for the bean pole. Just hook up that gorgeous drapery and our rooms will constitute a suite. So glad we are together. If you were down the hall I’d surely sit on your door mat like a faithful poodle. I just couldn’t risk trying out this exciting life without the protection and guidance of your wisdom. I noticed Miss Alton herself paused in a speech as you towered over her.”

“Glo, get your duds; you’ll feel better when you are out of those dusty things,” interrupted Trixy. “I’ll go down to that cute little room where Miss Alton holds court, and see about a telephone to mother. She will want to know we got here safely.”

The next item of note was the entrance of the bean pole, Sam, bearing a shiny new trunk.

“Just here,” directed Gloria. “I suppose I can keep it in my room——”

“With a cover. Miss Alton she always likes pretty covers over trunks.” Sam shifted the little table to give more space. “There, I guess that’ll be all right——”

“Oh, yes; thanks.” A half dollar was pressed into his convenient hand, and Gloria did not hide her impatience to be rid of the voluble Sam. He went. Girls were calling for him and there might be more tips.

Quickly Gloria fell to her trunk task but it did not readily give in to her key.

“Queer, but I suppose it’s stiff, being new,” she reasoned.

The rose colored dress, that which Jane insisted was most becoming to Gloria’s dark hair and dark eyes, would be found in the top tray of the new trunk, and this was to be the “irresistible gown” Trixy suggested as a flabbergaster for the first evening’s appearance.

“There!” exclaimed Gloria, as a spring of the lock indicated surrender. “Now I’ve got it.”

But raising the cover did not disclose the expected rose voile dress.

“Of all things!” gasped Gloria. “Whatever is—this?”

She was staring at a mass of glittering beads, or spangles, that seemed to fill the trunk tray. Just a hint of some material very green showed beneath the glistening surface, but whatever the article might be, it never had belonged to the girl looking at it.

She picked up an end of the material and found it heavy with spangles. Then she noticed an envelope pinned to an edge. Scrutinizing this she found the word “Precious” written across it, also “with care,” was plainly inscribed upon the little square. Realizing now that the trunk was not hers, Gloria attempted to replace the glittering stuff, but as she did so something red and sparkling fell from the envelope into her hand.

“Gems!” she exclaimed, gazing spellbound at the deep red glow that seemed to absorb all the light about it. The stone was about the size of a small bean and was cut in facets.

Frightened lest she be found in possession of another’s valuables, Gloria quickly dropped the end of the spangled goods back into the trunk tray, then slipped the big, red gem into the envelope through the corner hole it had cut its way out of. She had forgotten all about the rose colored costume, and even that Trixy was due back to dress for the first meeting with the girls of Altmount.

“How ever could I have mistaken that trunk?” Gloria worried. “Of course, it’s exactly like mine, but where’s the tag?”

With the lid closed and the lock snapped back she looked closer but found no tag to identify the strange piece of baggage.

Then, shuffling in the hall and Sam’s characteristic groaning indicated the coming of more baggage, and quickly as the door was opened Gloria welcomed her own special new trunk, which had been purchased amid much discussion, for Jane, the faithful, was insistent that a new trunk be at once beautiful and useful, a combination seemingly realized in the black enamelled article, so easily mistaken for another. The “popular trunk for young ladies” was, apparently, very popular at Altmount.

“Made a mistake,” wheezed Sam. “T’other girl had yourn. Jest a mite more work, but that’s all right,” hinted the hopeful handy man.

“I’m in such a hurry,” retorted Gloria meaningly.

“Oh, yes, of course. But ’t warn’t my fault exactly.”

“That’s perfectly all right. See, here’s my name on this trunk. I hadn’t noticed the other.”

“They’re all the same to me,” chuckled Sam, shuffling off without further reward.

When Trixy returned, Gloria was already aglow in her rose colored gown.

“Lovely!” pronounced the admiring Trixy. “If we don’t make an impression to-night it won’t be the fault of clothes. Just look at this. Isn’t it stunning?”

“Perfectly. Trix, you have such a modish way about you——”

“Oh, I don’t know. You are no dowdy yourself. You always look to me like Molly Dawn, or Betty Bangle, or some other quaint character, bound to smile and look darling.” An affectionate little squeeze illustrated this compliment, and presently both girls were being introduced to their fellow students. Gloria in rose color that heightened her sparkling dark beauty, and Trixy in French blue that beckoned the glints of her eyes.

It was a small school and boasted of the fact. Also, that its clientele would stand the “Social test,” whatever that uncertain measure is supposed to be, was conspicuously stated in the prospectus.

Gloria was secretly happy to be sponsored by the impressive Trixy. As a matter of fact, no one could doubt the latter’s standing. She was tall, a mellow blonde, the type softened with a tawny brown glow, and her mannerisms! It must have taken generations, thought Gloria humbly, to develop that smooth, irresistible ease and languid indifference toward irritating trifles.

But as a type Gloria, herself, was decidedly more pronounced. She was dark, with eyes that seemed to shoot sparks, with one dimple that always apologized for any pout the rather boyish mouth might affect, and withal Gloria had an air of independence sometimes mistaken for defiance.

As various as the characters they represented were the forms of greetings offered the new girls by those familiar with Altmount. Some “gushed,” impulsively generous in their squeezing handshakes and ebullient chatter, others were “stand off,” formal and “frozen,” as Gloria secretly classed the most conservative.

Pat Halliday explained her name as coming from the same Greek word Harriet was taken from.

“Only Patricia is so much nicer and Pat is perfectly jolly,” declared the Grecian descendant. “I should abhor Harriet; though Harry isn’t so bad.”

Gloria quickly found interest in Pat. She was almost red headed and almost blue eyed, losing out by a mere shade in each instance. She talked a lot and laughed a lot, but plainly was no poser. Taking a place beside Gloria at table, Pat kept up a running fire of talk that saved the new girl from any possible self consciousness. At another table Trixy was trying to be pleasant with a girl of very different personality. She (the other girl) raised her eyebrows instead of uttering replies, she shrugged her shoulders haughtily and seemed insipidly affected.

“The girl without a smile,” Gloria was promptly dubbing the ashen blonde. Trixy, sitting near enough, was flashing secret messages back to Gloria agreeing with the above. She was not having a very good time with the smileless girl, that was obvious.

Miss Alton sat at the head of the table, radiating good will. It was so important that her girls all become acquainted auspiciously. Although a small school, Altmount claimed the distinction of “finishing,” so that a sprinkling of high school graduates, and a few who failed to win the honor, were to be found among those present.

Both Trixy and Gloria were covertly taking notice of as many girls as politeness afforded glances at. There was, of course, a bevy of “Gabbies” who scarcely paused to swallow, also, like the girl without a smile, there were those who held off, looked important and posed for impressions. This might have been their honest prerogative, but somehow it seemed to natural, naïve Gloria, a bit affected.

“I do hope you’ll like it,” bubbled Pat. “We need a few good sports and I’m sure you’re one. There’s room for more fun here if we only have the workers.”

“I like fun,” admitted Gloria. “And yes, I guess I am used to it.” Her brown eyes sent out a sparkling guarantee.

After tea the girls paired off and strolled about the grounds. Pat “grabbed” Gloria, and both being of the younger set their romping went unscrutinized. Trixy, the imperturbable, seemed determined to provoke something like a smile from the reserved Mary Mears, but her good natured and tactful attempts were far from being successful. Mary Mears was wise, any one could see that. Her experience stood out like a wall, neither to be climbed over nor broken through. She was pretty but her skin betrayed traces of the applied arts, while her really wonderful violet eyes worked like magnetos. All this attracted Trixy. Any one so totally different offered her a working problem, something to find out, to analyze and, mayhap, to conquer.

The September evening was quickening into shadows when the students turned back to the broad verandahs and cozy porch corners.

“Hear that?” Pat asked Gloria. “That’s Jack Corday. She never stops talking and never says a sensible thing. Flashy,” criticised the jolly one. “Just notice her get up. But she’s a dear.”

It was impossible not to notice it. The girl called Jack (Gloria later heard Miss Alton give her Jacquinot) did talk incessantly in a voice that intruded everywhere, and as she promenaded up and down, dragging along a timid new girl called Ethel, the “get up” Pat mentioned was equally intrusive. A glaring, tiger-lily red baronet skirt, a black silk sweater and colorful bobbed hair. Dangling from her neck was a string of varied colored wooden beads with which she toyed constantly.

The string of beads reminded Gloria of the mistaken trunk.

“Is she a—stranger?” she asked Pat.

“Somewhat. That is, she comes and goes. I wonder Miss Alton admits her. Jack never settles down to anything serious. She makes me think of a big butterfly.”

“The black and yellow kind.”

“Uh-huh!” conceded Pat.

A call to the opening chorus within the assembly room was reluctantly obeyed. “Hail, Altmount,” composed by a brilliant but unpopular girl of the graduating class two years back, was murmured, mumbled and otherwise abused. The faculty chimed in with more enthusiasm than voice, and eventually the wail ended.

“Oh, let’s sing the regular college songs,” proposed Jack, slamming a yellow book on the piano rack in front of demure Miss Taylor.

But the majority of the girls, the great majority, deserted, and left few with Jack and timid Ethel to “try” the regular college songs. No one seemed to have a voice or there was something seriously wrong with the tunes, for one after the other they were “tried,” until the long suffering Miss Taylor proposed a truce.

“Jack doesn’t seem to be very popular,” ventured Gloria to the giggling Pat, when the trials were all over.

“She isn’t exactly, but somehow she seems to love opposition. I don’t know her well. This is only my second term, I came last Spring, but Jack Corday could climb a flag pole if she wanted to. She’s a wiz at gym, but books! She has about as much use for a book as an Indian has,” declared the accommodating Pat. “Just the same I love her.”

“My friend Trixy seems to have struck an iceberg,” further commented Gloria. The “iceberg” being the ashen blonde called Mary Mears.

“Oh, I don’t know her, she’s new,” replied Pat. “But even icebergs melt finally. She’s rather pretty, isn’t she?”

“Rather,” agreed Gloria just as Trixy joined her group on the corner bench.

CHAPTER II
TELLING TRIXY

By the merest chance Gloria did not tell Trixy of the trunk incident. Not that she had any intention of keeping from her friend such an interesting possibility, but because—well, each time she thought of it something intervened, until after days and then more than a week passed, the tale seemed too stale to be revived.

Pat proved delightfully amusing, Mary Mears was mysterious and Jacquinot Corday so spectacular that the first month at Altmount went by without a dull day or even a lonely night for Gloria.

Trixy Travers was at the finishing school chiefly because Gloria Doane had inveigled her into coming. As the fashionable and popular girl at Sandford, where her father was an important manufacturer, Trixy had enjoyed good times unlimited, but as Gloria was due to attend boarding school and she reasonably decided there would be much more security from either boredom or loneliness with Trixy to lean upon.

Few letters and fewer home visits were advised by this, as by most boarding schools, during the students’ first month or two, so that those away from home for the first time might more promptly become inured to their new surroundings; so it happened Gloria had only received and written two letters from and to Jane. Now, Jane, the faithful, had for years stood sponsor for Gloria, whose mother had died when Gloria was but a tiny child. Jane kept house at Barbend, the original home of Gloria and her father, and when the young girl came into Sandford to remain with her Aunt Harriet while her father took a foreign commission from his firm, Jane Morgan went to visit her own sister, she who had so many children that the snapshot pictures frequently sent Jane were apt to be misleading in personalities. They all looked alike and seemed too many for the camera.

Mr. Doane, Gloria’s father, had returned from abroad during the previous late winter, only to enter upon a longer trip to the Philippines. His homecoming the Christmas before added the final happy chapter to Gloria’s adventure as a real estate expert, for with Mr. Doane had come the young engineer, Sherry Graves, whose venture in Echo Park proved disastrous, ruined his hopes, and all but sent him adrift in despair. Then, the natural enemy of the pretty little park, an underground river vein, was accidentally discovered by Gloria and promptly turned into a harmless course by Sherry and his friend, Ben Hardy.

The result was a boomerang credited to Gloria. These home conditions explain the dearth of letters coming or not coming to her just now, at the new boarding school.

There had been one, however, from her father, remailed at San Francisco, and also a characteristic scrawl from Tommy Whitely, her childhood friend at Barbend. Aunt Harriet had written, of course, telling of her daughter Hazel’s wonderful progress in voice culture. Hazel had spent the previous year at Altmount, while Gloria submitted meekly to a confused, if not unjust plan, of giving this preference to the “artistic cousin.”

Trixy’s letters were not quite so restricted, as she was in the finishing class. Among the most interesting was one from Sherry, who told of a “perfectly thrilling plan” for the further development of Gloria’s Echo Park.

“You’ll be rich, Glo, if Sherry keeps on. He writes of perfectly fairy like castles on your property.”

“I don’t want to be rich,” replied Gloria evenly, “but I am glad that the poor mason and his family, the one who at first lost so much in the work there, are finally made happy and comfortable. Of course it was Ben’s genius in engineering that did it all.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” drawled Trixy. “It was rather queer the genius couldn’t find that sneaky little river vein, that almost turned the pretty park on end. A mere girl, one Gloria Doane, managed that.”

The two chums were spending the evening in their connecting rooms, discussing the home news. A letter to Trixy received on the late mail added zest to the discussion.

“Really, how do you like it here, Glo?” asked Trixy. She shot her feet out in front of her with the question, and kicked over a useless little stool in the process.

“Much better than I expected,” admitted Gloria. “Pat’s always so jolly, then there’s the haughty Mary Mears and the breezy Jack Corday for variety. Who could complain with all that?”

“Isn’t Pat a lark? She just bubbles over everything and, as the boys say, gets away with it,” replied Trixy. “But Mary really seems mysterious. I haven’t been able to pry open the reserve crust. Yet, it doesn’t seem at all natural to me.”

“How about Jack?”

“The human pinwheel?”

“Pat says she is just about that.”

“How?”

“A wiz at gym.”

“Oh. Perhaps that accounts for her circus clothes.”

“That reminds me, Trixy. I have been wanting to tell you so often——”

“Whew! Sounds guilty!”

“Not quite. But I really have wanted to tell you,” floundered Gloria.

“Go ahead!”

“Then please listen.”

“All ears.”

Gloria tossed her head up defiantly. “One doesn’t peg confidences at another’s head,” she pouted.

“Now, Glo, darling,” cooed Trixy. “I does truly want to hear. Be a lamb and tell me.”

Settling anew Gloria began:

“It’s about trunks——”

“The portable, or athletic?”

“Now, Trixy!”

“But you do offer such bait for little fishes, pet, I just can’t resist. I had trunks on my mind. The basket ball squad is considering something like them to pad out for rough play. But tell me, like a pet, what about your trunks?”

Trixy was irresistible. She wore the simple uniform of Altmount, the white shirtwaist and dark blue skirt used by the older girls, and its very simplicity set off more effectively her almost faultless personality. With an arm around the pouting Gloria, and lips in close proximity to a left ear, she again cooed her request for the secret.

Gloria’s own lips lost their pout in a real surrendering smile, as she again attempted the tale.

“You see, that afternoon we came here there was so much confusion with baggage and so little time to dress——”

“And I warned you to fix up your finest.”

“Exactly. Well, I tackled, what I took for my own new, shiny, black trunk, and found it too hard to unlock——”

“You called in the Bean Pole?”

“No. I struggled and conquered.”

“Being you, you would.”

“But when the lid finally decided to come up I found the belongings within not mine.”

“Oh!” Trixy fell back a little and waited. Her exclamation was merely a polite acquiescence.

“Yes,” continued Gloria, “the top of that trunk was covered if not filled with the queerest materials——”

“Oh! Whoozy-boozy! How mysterious! No skeletons?”

“Quite the opposite. A perfect glitter of gems——”

“Gloria Doane! And you have never told me we are harboring a pirate’s daughter! Gems!”

“At least they looked like gems,” went on the imperturbable Gloria. “Of course, I was all a-flutter and couldn’t possibly inspect,” (this with an air of real importance) “but I did manage to lay hold of an envelope.”

“Glo! An envelope! With the pirate’s address!”

“Are they so careless as to leave addresses lying around loose like that? I thought they always used secret codes, made with pieces of string and rusty nails scattered in a long, long trail.”

“Of course. How stupid of me. The envelope was full of rusty spikes.”

Gloria twisted herself away with an air of finality until Trixy seized her. “Go ahead,” she implored. “Go right straight ahead. This suspense is killing me. What was the glitter and what did the envelope say about the secret?”

“You know, Trix, I really was a bit scared. You were off gallivanting, and there I was all alone, with a strange trunk full of mysteriously glittering stuff. How did I know who might rush in and accuse me.”

“Exactly! How did you know?” Trixy’s banter now toned down to real interest. “The envelope, dear, what about that?”

“I had begun to realize I was trespassing, you know, and I just glanced at the envelope. On it was written the word ‘Precious.’”

“Precious?”

“Yes. That and ‘With Care.’ But just as I attempted to put it back, I had taken it in my hands of course, just as I went to put it back, a stone fell out.”

“A gem?”

“It looked like one. A great red garnet or some sort of stone that seemed bursting with imprisoned glow.”

“How perfectly wonderful!”

“Yes, honestly, Trix, it made me creepy. I got the fire-drop back in that envelope as quickly as I could, you can believe me. It made me think of an animal’s eye, not a serpent’s eye, they’re green, but the eye of some sneaky little beast——”

“Beastie, Glo. You must call the small ones, beasties. But you are so, so graphic, you give me the shivers. Are you sure there are none of the beasties crawling around here now?”

“But I haven’t told you about the spangly things,” persisted Gloria, ignoring the frivolity. “They didn’t seem to be on gowns. I couldn’t, in the moment, make out what the article was. All I saw was glitter and sparkle.”

“What color was it?”

“Many colors, I thought; but red shone through. You see, Sam came back just as I got the trunk shut. I wouldn’t want to have been discovered snooping into another girl’s stuff,” declared Gloria.

“But whom could it have belonged to?”

“That’s an interesting question, don’t you think so? Just imagine what sort of girl would bring that here?”

“Exactly. But you watch little Trixy solve the mystery of the trunk full of gems!”

“I’m quite willing to,” agreed Gloria, with a weary little sigh.

CHAPTER III
MEET MAGGIE

Two days later Maggie, who swept rooms and talked a lot, also counted hairpins, picked from the dust, and bewailed her own constant loss insinuating a present need, this Maggie, with a season’s new broom and last year’s dust pan, a basket of dusters, brushes, and in the bottom such articles as the girls donated on her rounds, well, anyhow, she came in to clear up Gloria’s room.

“This bein’ a double,” analyzed Maggie, “I’ll have to have it free.”

“Free?” repeated Gloria.

“Yes. I could do it whilst you’re in class, but I like to keep these new curtains well shook and that makes considerable flare around. Ain’t they pretty?”

“Very.”

“Then, jest pick up your precious stuff, I allus calls the little things precious, and whilst you’re out this afternoon—you will be out?”

“Yes.”

“Whilst you’re both out I clean. I allus thinks this is the prettiest ‘sweet’ in the house. Ain’t it now?”

Gloria was hurrying before the wavering broom. Her “precious stuff” would be easily gathered and then she might escape from Maggie’s gossip.

“About the hairpins now, where shall I put them?”

“Oh, keep them,” smiled Gloria. “You see I never use any.”

“That’s so. Ain’t I stupid. Since the bobbs came in it seems to me that hairpins is harder to get. Stores even, don’t allus carry them.” She retrieved a brown lock of hair that was trying to get down her back. “And my hair’s such a nuisance. You don’t wear nets either?”

“No.”

“What a comfort. I’ll put any baby pins and such right—where should I put them?”

“You won’t be apt to find any,” said Gloria, wondering what next Maggie might hint for.

“Well, I’m honest as the sun, Miss Alton says, and what’s on the floor goes on the bureau, every time.” The basket and contents were inadvertently tipped over just then, and Maggie dove after the things that flew.

“There, ain’t that a pretty waist? Miss Davis, she’s the rich girl that has number ten, she’s been here, land know how long, and I asked her yesterday if this was her last year and she didn’t know. She’s the loveliest girl, and so good-natured. I jest said I loved blue and she gave me the waist. I think it’ll fit me.” It was held aloft midway between chin and waistline, and Gloria said it looked all right.

Then she escaped.

And Maggie ostensibly swept the room, aired the pillows and shook the curtains. Trixy’s room had an unusually large mirror hung from the wall, between two windows, and whether Maggie posed in borrowed finery or merely spent time in profitable meditation, is not relevant, for it was her own time as well as her own work, and Maggie managed to finish on schedule in spite of all interruptions.

When Gloria ventured back, after first peeking in from behind Trixy’s curtains, she found things nicely slicked up.

“Good old Maggie!” she thought. “I am sure she is quite as honest as she claims to be.”

Addressing the well dusted bureau with a few more appropriate remarks, Gloria’s gaze fell upon a strange object.

“What’s this?” she asked aloud, for a small, glittering, bead-like stone instantly recalled the other. That one she had replaced in the torn envelope and put back in the strange trunk.

“A gem! A real garnet—or ruby——”

There was no question as to where it came from. Maggie had found it upon the floor, perhaps under the edge of the rug, and it must have fallen there from the envelope marked “Precious.”

Gloria turned the stone over on her open palm. She knew little of precious stones, but she easily guessed that this was valuable.

“What shall I do with it?”

The thought that its owner would resent her knowledge of so secret an affair as the opening of a trunk, and the handling of its contents, was disturbing.

“Oh, bother!” complained Gloria. “What am I going to do about a thing like this, anyway?”

Trixy’s return was welcomed. And the discovered treasure promptly and adequately discussed.

“Suppose you keep it for a day or two——”

“No indeed,” objected Gloria. “I have no wish to be throttled by the pirate’s daughter.”

“But it has been here for days——”

“That’s why my head ached. This thing is charmed. Maybe a drop of some one’s blood is sealed within the crystal,” she flippantly suggested, turning the stone over and over, smiling fondly upon it and otherwise showing neither fear nor distaste for the frozen “drop of blood.”

“I think it’s a garnet,” suggested Trixy.

“Why should a boarding school girl want to lug such stuff around with her?”

“Why?” repeated Trixy. “No custom officers to dodge.”

“But in that trunk! And not even in a strong little box,” argued Gloria.

“Some girls are careless. Also some grown ups. You know how very often real diamonds are hidden in old shoes and retrieved by honest cobblers, who become socialists after receiving the dollar ninety-eight cents reward,” philosophised Trixy. “Still, the girl who dropped them in her trunk must have been in an awful hurry.”

“But why hasn’t the owner advertised on the bulletin?” reasoned Gloria further.

“It is queer. Do you suppose Maggie knows——”

“That’s so. I’ll have to give Maggie something.”

“Better thank her for finding your bead and give her ten cents,” suggested the practical Trixy. “Otherwise, you may not be able to make a satisfactory accounting. Don’t let her suspect what you suspect.”

“A good idea. Listen! I hear her plaintive voice. Let’s have done with it. Lend me exactly a dime.”

“First, put the pirate’s treasure in my jewel box. I’ll be responsible for it and defy its evil eye—until you find the owner,” agreed Trixy affably. Gloria borrowed the dime and thrust it upon the inarticulate Maggie. Money, it seemed, always surprised her into speechlessness.

“And now,” decided Gloria, “I’ll take the ‘evil eye’ down to the office——”

“Suppose it is a real secret, that the owner has some worthy motive in hiding it.”

“Trix, you’re a regular Portia. I do hope you decide to study law. How would you suggest I get rid of the thing?”

“Post a notice, asking the loser of a small red stone to call at this room. We might excite less comment if we said ‘trinket’ instead of ‘stone.’”

“And have every one who lost a hair net, a hairpin, or a barrette, calling,” objected Gloria.

“That’s so. But Maggie may see the notice and recognize her find.”

“She won’t have time to read bulletins today.”

“No, I suppose not. Then just write a simple, unsuspicious notice, and say small red stone.”

“Peachy!” exclaimed Gloria. “Then we’ll have a chance to learn who really is the Pirate’s Daughter.”

Trixy wrapped the vagrant stone in a piece of tissue paper and then in a piece of tin foil from her film package, meanwhile moaning weird incantations. Then, after waving it in the air to break the spell, she very gingerly dropped the paper and tin foil packet into her little jewel case.

Gloria wrote the “found notice” with directions for reclaiming the “red stone” and was off instantly to post it upon the bulletin.

“Thir-rill-ling!” she chanted. “Suppose it’s Pat’s!”

“Or Jack’s?”

“Or just a red bead from the ten cent store?”

“I’d like to get a couple of dozen,” declared Trixy.

“Well, here’s for the bill board. Better watch out. Some one might kidnap me.”

With a parting laugh Gloria raced off and it seemed she was back, out of breath, and out of speech, before Trixy could close the drawer on the jewel box.

“I feel like a thief!” she gasped. “Isn’t it horrid to find a thing so long after?”

“As if you had been waiting for an offered reward?” laughed Trixy. “We aren’t likely to be suspected of anything like that, so don’t worry, lamb. I’m just all a-quiver of anticipation.”

But after lunch the little note was missing from its hook on the bulletin and in its place was found a message sealed and addressed to “Finder.” The girls read it in their own room behind closed doors.

The note read: “Please drop into old brass vase on teakwood stand in alcove of west sitting room.” That was all.

“Oh,” moaned Gloria, in disappointment. “Not even to say drop what.”

“How perfectly mean,” growled Trixy.

“Suppose we don’t. We might say that it ‘must be called for,’” suggested Gloria.

“But then,” mused Trixy, “there may be a real reason.”

“Again, noble Portia, I salute thee,” mocked Gloria. “In other words, just as you say. But I’d hate to be fooled again. That old trunk seems destined to add to my misery. Not that there’s much more room for addition,” (another groan and wild, agonizing rolling of eyes) “but I suppose we may as well drop the ‘jool’ in the vaase.”

“May as better,” amended Trixy.

“You do it and I’ll watch.”

“Foxy. Suppose some of the eagles see you. How do we know this isn’t sort of an initiation?”

“We don’t. I never thought of that, little Brightness. As you say, we had better follow directions, and not be compelled to wear our waists inside out, or parade two different colored stockings. Here, give me the pesky thing. I’ll hie me to the dump with it and so cast off the spell.”

Almost as quickly as she had posted the letter did she “dump the thing and beat it,” in her own inelegant language. She now stood before Trixy making foolish faces.

“Ugh!” she exclaimed, brushing her hands to shed the imagined pollution, “now it’s all over. And we’ve lost trace of the Pirate’s Daughter.”

“There’s no telling,” presaged Trixy. “She may remember you in her will.”

“And again she may not. Well, may all our ill health go with it, as dear old Jane would say. Trixy, when do we go out to see our anxious friends?” (This meant the home folks.)

“I dunno. But let’s stick it out for a while and then, when we do take a little trip to Sandford, we won’t feel like a couple of hookey kids. Not that I wouldn’t love to see my mommer right now——”

“And my—da-da!”

Reflection brought gloom. Forgotten was the frozen blood stone and the old brass vase. Two girls sat glum, with heads down and knees up, with chins pushed up into pouting lips, and naught but an occasional groan or grunt giving sign of articulation.

“I dunno,” said Gloria finally. “But there’s Pat! Mum’s the word, dearie, about the pirate’s watch guard or collar button or—paper weight. Don’t let us whisper——”

“Not a whisper,” agreed Trixy.

So Pat never knew what she had missed, and didn’t even guess that she had missed anything.

CHAPTER IV
THE TALISMAN

“What was that?”

“What?”

“I heard something. I felt the door open.”

“You’re dreaming. It isn’t daylight yet. Turn over and try the other side.”

“Honest, Trixy,” Gloria raised her voice a trifle, “I did hear something. I am going to get up and look around.”

She did. It was daylight but not yet very bright, as the late fall morning was tardy in asserting itself.

“The door is open!” exclaimed Gloria. “I am sure I shut it.”

“I have always told you to lock it,” Trixy reminded her.

“But I hate bolted doors. They make me feel I’m being locked in a jail.” Gloria shut the door almost noiselessly, and then turned on the light.

“Nothing missing, that I can see——”

“Then, please, go back to bed,” begged Trixy from the other side of the curtains. “I do hate to lose the last half hour.”

“Sorry,” Gloria went to the window and looked out at the early lights and shadows. Then she quietly stole back to turn off the light that hung over her dresser.

As she raised her hand her eye fell upon a strange object. There was something, a small, white paper packet on the pin tray.

“Trix!” she exclaimed excitedly. “There’s something here——”

“What?”

“Get up. Let’s look. It has been slipped in the door and left on the tray.”

There was no mistaking the seriousness of her voice. Gloria meant what she was saying, so Trixy tumbled out of bed and joined her before the dresser.

“It’s heavy,” she said.

“Open it. You’re not afraid of it?”

“Of course not, but I am surprised. I hope it’s no more blood stones——”

“Just that. From the Pirate’s Daughter, I’ll bet! Hurry and let’s see! I’m quivering with——”

“Come over on the bed and spread out something,” suggested Gloria. “I don’t want the jools to roll under the rug this time.”

They both sat under a carefully spread pink coverlet, and then, very gingerly, Gloria opened the little package.

“Maybe some trick,” she guessed, still delaying inspection. “I hate to spoil our fun by finding some pop-corn, maybe.”

“Oh, do give it to me,” begged Trixy impatiently. “If it’s pop-corn I’m not going to waste any more time over it.”

“A’w right,” agreed Gloria affably. “Half the responsibility is yours, don’t forget that.”

The white tissue paper was carefully unfolded, and then there was disclosed a little necklace, made of some dark, queer beads.

“Oh-oo-ho!” squealed Gloria. “More queer stones! And look! Here’s a note!”

Eagerly scanning what was written in back-hand on a piece of plain white note paper, the girls found this:

“To Gloria: I beg you to accept this trinket. That which was found was very precious to me. Won’t you be generous enough to accept this without question?

In Cog.”

They read it again. Gloria coiled the necklace around on the palm of her hand until it looked like a little black snake. Then she gave it to Trixy.

Held up to the light Trixy thought it looked like agate. Her father, she said, had a ring, his grandfather gave every boy in the family a moss agate stone each cut from the parent specimen, and this little necklace had one stone at least that looked like agate.

“But these,” pointed out Gloria, “they just look like Egyptian beads I bought at our fair. Don’t you know those you always liked? Black pearls, or some imitation?”

“But these are each different?”

“Yes. Sort of home-made affair. Who ever could have wished it on me?”

Both girls sat there thinking. Each turned her head, this way and that, cocking ears up as if some myth in the air might explain the mystery, the necklace was passed back and forth automatically, but neither offered to try it on. It was about big enough to slip over the head, and the more they scrutinized it the better they liked it.

“It’s so odd,” conceded Gloria.

“Not as odd as its circumstances,” said Trixy. “Why in the world would a girl want to be so mysterious? Seems to me sort of sensational.”

“And so wounds your social soul,” teased Gloria. “Never mind, dearie, when I drag in the Pirate’s Daughter from her den, it may be in the attic here, you know, and when I tame her so that she’ll eat out of my hands, I fix it up to include you in our trip to her father’s cave. He must be richer than old Captain Kidd to raise such a crop of gems or illuminated spangles, as I glimpsed in that trunk. Now, why couldn’t In Cog have sent me a little jewelled apron or a bedizened girdle to wear to the dingus? You know we are invited?”

“Yes.” The “dingus” or regular social affair exclusively for the pupils of Altmount, did not, at the moment, offer distraction.

“It seems to me we ought to detect a queer girl, easily. She is queer, of course, or she couldn’t think this way. She had to follow her own line of reasoning, and you’ve got to admit that’s queer,” said Trixy, philosophically. “Therefore she must be queer. Now, who is the queerest?”

“Impossible to select,” joked Gloria, “they’re all so queer. Pat’s funny, Jack’s funny, Jean’s snippy, little Helen is just the kind of girl to get an awful crush on one. She goes about with her eyes and mouth at half mast, ready to weep or laugh at the crack of a whip; but even at that she’d never have sense enough to plan all this. Well, Ixy-love, you may wear my jools whenever thou wisheth, and be sure to note the effect. They may give you chills or you might get a fever, or even that black, squarish little stone may exert a beneficent influence on the snippy Jean and make her perlite, for once in her sour life,” Gloria’s manner is not transferable to words but it was flippantly funny. “Perhaps we better start a new diary, the diary of the hoodooed necklace,” she suggested, and would have turned a somersault right then and there, had not Trixy grabbed her left leg ‘on the wing.’

“And I guess we may as well crawl out and get into a shower,” she continued, “before the infants rub their sleepy little eyes into the early sunlight. Though it looks like rain. I couldn’t say anything pretty without sunlight. There’s the seven-thirty bell. Would you ever believe it was more than five A. M.?”

The necklace lay on the pink coverlet while the two girls locked arms and swung back and forth like a pair of solemn Arabs. Anent nothing, they embraced always in that fashion, and the signal to halt was usually the realization of urgent duty. It was now time to dress.

“Scrum-bunctuous, anyhow,” decided Gloria. “Just think of all that’s happened a-ready. I cracked open a trunk, had a precious stone hid under my rug for nearly a month, returned it by way of a moldy old vase, got a note from an In Cog and was the recipient of a coal miner’s souvenir, the last strike settlement maybe; all this and nothing more at Altmount, quoth the raven. Never-more! There! When it’s first worn by either of us I fully expect a sensation.”

“Why don’t you put it right on and go down to breakfast? If a girl should notice it you might have just cause for suspicion.”

“You put it on, if you want to,” retorted Gloria. “This isn’t my day for necklaces. I have already decided to wear the ugly and uncomfortable sailor’s noose, prescribed.”

But all the day and for sometime thereafter both girls were ever on the alert to detect a clue to the original owner of the little talisman. Many strings of beads were significantly fingered and admired, but without provoking a tell-tale flush of admission, and as often as the opportunity could be made, Gloria or Trixy talked about foreign stones, especially dark ones with little light streaks running through. But at the end of a week both girls were forced to admit “no progress.”

“Tell you what we’ll do,” proposed Gloria. “Just let’s forget it. Put it away and wait. Some day the culprit will betray herself. Then, if we are not parties to some dark plot that includes hiding the queen’s jools, we’ll be lucky kids.”

“Just as you say,” agreed Trixy. “But don’t forget to-night is the night we are supposed to celebrate. I hope you can express a note of interest in this here Altmount without straining your conscience. Me—I’m beginning to like it.”

“It is picking up,” admitted Gloria. Both were assuming facetiousness.

There was, however, plenty of interest, “without straining consciences” at the dance. The fine old assembly room was gay with colors of many classes no longer otherwise represented, there was a very creditable orchestra composed of seniors and girls in the finishing classes, but more than these mere details, the personalities of all those present came out for the “acid test” according to Trixy.

Friends paired off, and groups assembled. Pretty gowns were praised with wordless glances of approval, new dances were demonstrated and various local peculiarities shown, even Pat declaring that the new position was quite like the “old fashioned way her mother had always insisted was the only correct way,” and so on passed a happy evening, at the boy-less dance, after which, like the spreading of a map, the personalities of students stood revealed.

No silly stunts nor traditional initiations were countenanced at Altmount, not since that rather disastrous event, still talked of, but no longer risked. It was the night one girl got locked in a closet and another climbed from the third floor window on a rope of bed sheets. Both were “laid up for repairs,” and a stringent rule against all rough play or initiations was the outcome.

But there were even now some secret affairs held in junior or soph quarters, usually followed the next day by pronounced fits of absentmindedness in class. Neither Gloria nor Trixy had been invited to any of these. First years usually were not, quite contrary to the regulation college customs.

“That’s because they want a chance to find out Who’s Who before taking one into their exclusive circles, I suppose,” Gloria remarked to Trixy, after listening for the best part of an hour to a report given by Janice. She had been asked by Jean’s contingent. She had the advantage of belonging to a family whose ancestral trees were knotted by colonial ties.

“But so far as I could gather,” scoffed Gloria, “it was an amateur fudge party, and the fudge got badly scorched, so I guess we didn’t miss much.”

“And, whereas it is against the rules to light little stoves in rooms, and the perpetrators are apt to be censured, I guess we are well out of it,” also scoffed Trixy.

“But they have to break rules, that’s the main idea,” Gloria explained. “Yet, it must have been pathetic to see the dear things trying to get fun out of the wicked pastime of making fudge on pin trays. I’d love to have had a view from a convenient distance.”

“We’ll see if we can’t hire the real kitchen, some evening,” suggested Trixy. “We’ll ask the faculty, invite them, I mean.”

“And all the kitchen staff,” added Gloria. “That would be fun. And the fudge will run a far greater chance of being fit to eat.”

This was held to be a brilliant idea and worth working out. So it happened that the domestic science class took on a new group of pupils unawares, and not only did Gloria and Trixy hold a fudge party in the kitchen a few afternoons later, as their part in the new year’s activity but the idea spread, until pop-corn drills and taffy pulls in the kitchen became almost common. Then it was that entertaining afterwards, in rooms, while despoiled of the precious rule breaking, offered real opportunities, and as a hostess Trixy became decidedly popular, while Gloria and Pat achieved marked success as floaters.

But such ordinary school happenings were mere calendar incidents, and like the calendar, interesting only to those who mark the days.

CHAPTER V
JACK’S SUDDEN DEPARTURE

It was Pat who spread the news. A messenger boy had come late in the night with a telegram for Jack, and now, today, the day after the night alarm, Jack was gone!

“Some one sick or a sudden death?” hazarded Gloria. It was about time for a class and the conversation was necessarily snatchy.

“Jack doesn’t seem to have folks, at least, no one comes to see her,” explained the entertaining Pat, catching her blue barrette in a clump of hair much beyond its capacity.

“We’ll miss her,” spoke up Trixy. “I like Jack; she’s a positive cure for the blues.”

“Isn’t she? Jack is a lark, even if she does dress like—a fire sale.”

Gloria didn’t smile. Pat should not be encouraged in such criticism, especially now that Jack was gone and could not defend herself.

But after the morning classes and just before lunch, it was impossible for either Gloria or Trixy not to overhear a little stronger criticism than Pat’s harmless remark was intended to convey.

A group of girls behind a screen in the lavatory were even more critical and less considerate.

“Did you hear the row?” asked one.

“Did I? Thought the house was afire,” from another.

“Such a voice! That woman must be a perfect tyrant. The way she shouted at poor Alty.”

Gloria coughed loudly and meaningly, but the girls in the wash room rattled on.

“Couldn’t a’been her mother?”

“No—a Steppy, Jack calls her.”

“But why drag her away like that? In the middle of the night.”

“Family affairs,” tittered a new voice. “Wasn’t it dramatic?”

“Can’t say I think so, in an open hall and at midnight,” some one grumbled.

“But she wired first.”

“She should have sent the fire department first. Poor Alty was almost choked with indignation.”

Trixy slammed down the shoes she was attempting to clean, but her warning was altogether misinterpreted, for Jean Engle popped from behind the screen and claimed both Trixy and Gloria as additional debaters.

“We’re just talking about poor Jack,” gurgled Jean. “Isn’t it a shame she had to go away? She must perfectly dread her old ‘Steppy’—stepmother, and now she’s dragged her off again.” An uncertain sigh ended the pretended sympathy.

“Too bad she isn’t long distance eared,” joked Trixy, with a shade of subtility. “I’m sure she would be flattered with such championship.”

“I don’t care,” persisted Jean, not to be quelled in her efforts at a little excitement. “Jack never gets a chance to become interested in her work, and I suppose if she flunks at exams there’ll be no more mercy shown her than——”

“Hear! Hear!” broke in Arline Spragg. “Can any one imagine our Jean casting such precious bread upon the waters——”

Arline paused. A step outside gave warning and all eyes turned toward the opening curtains that divided the “lav” from a small rest room. Mary Mears’ form was now framed in the shadow. Her face was white, her deep set, violet eyes seemed almost black, and there was no mistaking her whole attitude as one of consternation.

Trixy was the first to find speech.

“Hello, Mary,” she said quite casually. “We are enjoying the most popular indoor sport, backbiting.”

“Yes!” Eyebrows lifted and shoulders shrugged.

“You know poor Jack is gone,” chimed in Jean Engle. “Dragged away in the night by a horrid Steppy——”

“Steppy!”

“Uh-huh. That’s what Jack calls her. We’ve never, any of us, seen her, but have all heard her. She’s that sort, vulgarly noisy——”

Poor Mary’s blonde head had gone higher and the white face seemed a shade more pallid as Jean gabbled on. Disgust, nothing less, except perhaps a hidden fear, was expressed in her haughty attitude, and somehow she reminded Gloria of a handsome animal trapped by refined cruelty.

“I hate gossip,” Mary said, crisply.

“You do!” retorted Pat. “Well, it’s a necessary evil here. We have to do something, why not gossip?”

“When a girl’s back is turned?” Mary qualified.

“But it isn’t about Jack, it’s the old lady. She must be a shrew. Can’t we say that about her when she wakes us up in the dead of the night?” Pat retorted.

“And we are really defending Jack.” This from Jean.

Gloria, being a newcomer and also in the “freshie” class, held back from the discussion. Exchanging glances with Trixy, both had plainly shown surprise that Mary should have appeared so haggard. Even her usual studied calmness was replaced by nervous little jerks, one of which caused her to drop and shatter the drinking glass.

“Oh!” she gasped. “How stupid of me!”

“Let me pick it up,” offered Gloria kindly. “Trixy says I can walk on glass, just because she saw me walk over clam shells at home. Anybody here ever bathe from a shelly beach? I have one at my native dock.”

This sally mercifully changed the subject, and beaches sandy, beaches rocky, or beaches shelly, were soon being discussed from as many view points as there were persons expressing them.

Mary beamed gratitude upon Gloria. It was her first unbending, and perhaps because the approval was not easy to obtain, Gloria appreciated it more fully. She twinkled understandingly.

“I hate to be a nuisance,” Mary said rather humbly, “but my hand must have been wet and the glass slipped. Do you report damages to the office?”

“Don’t you dare!” thundered Pat. She was now all primped and pretty and ready for the walk or hike, as she termed the proposed exercise scheduled for the afternoon. “If you start anything so honest as paying for a broken drinking glass, I would feel absolutely bound to tell who broke the glass dish——”

“Hush, Pat. You perpetual gabber. We all hated the dish. It was too small for cookies——”

“All right, Becky dear. Don’t get excited. I’m not on my way to the office.”

Gloria had gathered up the splints of glass and skillfully dropped them into the marshmallow box Mary held to receive them.

“You’re a dear,” murmured the pale girl. “But I shouldn’t have let you do it.”

“You couldn’t have stopped me,” retorted Gloria. “Don’t you know how stubborn I am? When I take a notion——”

“Come along,” interrupted Trixy in an undertone. “Going to hike, Mary?”

“I’m afraid not——”

“Oh, do,” begged Gloria. “There’s nothing like it for nerves, and you have a headache, haven’t you?”

“A little. I didn’t sleep well. Guess I’m not quite fit for this quiet life——” she smiled quizzically.

“Isn’t it awful?” interrupted Trixy. “I don’t know whether to bless or blame Gloria for dragging me here. But not being a quitter I suppose I’ll stay.”

“If you don’t, I don’t,” declared Gloria. All three had separated themselves from the others and were now on the porch ready for the hike and awaiting the leader.

“Really, don’t you like it here?” pressed Mary gently. She might not have seemed so pale but for her black satin dress. She always wore such dark colors when the uniform was not required, whereas then the other girls just melted into color glory.

“We are rather spoiled, I’m afraid,” admitted Trixy. “Little Glo has lately distinguished herself as an engineer; that is, she discovered a river the engineers had overlooked, and what hasn’t happened in the way of good fortune since that eventful day!” Trixy intoned reminiscently.

“How interesting!” Mary said politely.

“Since you’re telling tales, Trixy, I might add——” drawled Gloria, “that the engineer, the young, handsome and all that sort of thing young fellow, is a special friend of yours. There is the barest possibility she misses him——”

“Glo!”

“And he’s gone off again following my dear dad! Way out Philippine way——”

“Just for that you shan’t see my letter!”

“A letter! From Sherry?”

“Sherwood, please. He has outgrown Sherry. Want to see his stationery?”

The inscribed envelope (from Trixy’s pocket) was passed around. Gloria read it backwards and forwards, made fun of it and approved in the same breath. Then it was handed over to Mary.

“Why!” she exclaimed, “that name seems familiar. Was he abroad last year?”

“Yes. Were you?” asked Trixy simply.

“Yes, that is—yes,” floundered Mary, and a hint of confused color touched up the pale cheeks.

“How jolly! Did you really know our noble Sherry?” demanded Gloria quite enthused.

“Oh, I wouldn’t just say that,” Mary answered with a return of her usual restraint. “One meets others while travelling, and sometimes we see names on the hotel lists——”

“But we must tell Sherry,” Gloria rattled on. “Trixy, do you mind if I write?”

“I’ll put in a little censored note——”

“I’m sure he has never heard of me, of Mary Mears,” declared Mary, just as Miss Alton, otherwise “Alty” and little Miss Taylor, otherwise “Whisper” appeared and marshalled forces for the four mile hike.

There was opportunity for confidences along the way, and Mary’s attitude was seriously discussed by the two girls from Sandford.

“She’s high-spirited,” declared Trixy.

“And touchy,” added Gloria.

“I can’t just see why she acts so offish.”

“Seems to keep the brake on every minute.”

“Afraid of hills—sliding, I mean.”

“Into reality. I’ve thought of that.”

“She’s a splendid contrast to Jack, isn’t she?” concluded Gloria, as the hikers halted at Van Winkle’s Spring. Then Old Rip entertained most royally.

CHAPTER VI
SMOLDERING FIRES

“Altmount” was so named from the fact that the Alton family had settled, built and managed the mount for more than four generations. The original homestead was now the smallest of the three imposing structures that clung to the hillsides, and was used to house the youngest pupils of the select school, while in a splendid stone and shingle structure recently built, and unquestionably an important executive building for the seminary proper, were domiciled Gloria and Trixy.

Gloria might have been relegated to No. 2 known as the Wigwam, from a curious Indian legend attached to it, but somehow the influential Trixy succeeded in keeping her friend with her. Not quite sixteen, country life and natural fondness for healthy exercise had developed Gloria into the attractive personality termed “wholesome,” but comparing this with the uncertain ages and equally uncertain types about her, very often the “sweet sixteen” was mistaken for seventeen or even greater “teens.”

Now, Pat was seventeen, and she might have been classed among the “little ones.” She was small, round, dimplely and “bubblely.” It would be hard to imagine Pat ever supporting with dignity her real title, Patricia Halliday. Jean Engle was tall and willowy, and wore brown braids in a coronet about her head. She had rather a sharp tongue, and unfortunately her friends laughed at “her cuts.” The comparative isolation of boarding school naturally drew out and magnified each girl’s peculiar traits, so that what might have seemed rude in Jean at home was hailed as “good fun” at Altmount.

It was she who suddenly checked Gloria’s laughter. The departure of Jack had not yet ceased to be a subject for gossip, when a group of the girls were squatted around the Sentinel Pine, the only one tree upon the spacious grounds allowed to foster from year to year the carpet of pine needles about its roots. These were not raked up because they formed so splendid a little rest ground for the fortunate girls who “got there first.”

“You’re not a bit like your cousin,” announced Jean out of a clear sky, favoring Gloria with a critical look at the same moment.

“You mean Hazel?” floundered Gloria, sensing objection in Jean’s pert remark.

“Of course. Hazel seems so—oh, so sort of—well——”

“Do say it, Jean. Glo will forgive you,” broke in Pat characteristically.

“Oh, you see,” interfered Trixy, “Hazel is temperamental. She has a voice. See how short a time she stayed here. Just a brief year——”

“Where is Hazel now?” asked Blanche Baldwin.

“She is at home when not at the conservatory,” replied Gloria. “Hazel really has a promising voice.”

“Ye-ah,” drawled Pat, with an uncertain smile and an impolite gulp.

“But I meant that, somehow, you don’t seem a bit like Hazel—in your ways,” came back Jean without so much consideration as a direct address with Gloria’s name to soften it.

Gloria bit her lip. Pat bit hers so hard it dragged the dimple out of her chin. Trixy, as usual, knew just what to say and she said it.

“Hazel has rather sophisticated ways for a girl brought up in Sandford. But then, it has always seemed to me, that big town folks are apt to overdo it; like strangers trying on the Boston accent.”

Gloria smiled at Trixy’s adroitness. She had deliberately turned the interests from Gloria’s possible mannerisms to Hazel’s. Still, a suppressed little twinge tugged at her consciousness. Was she different from the other girls? Were her tom-boyish, country ways rude or even rough?

More than once she had noticed surprised eyes staring at her when impulsively she had said or done something as she might have done at her old Barbend home, when Tommy Whitely would have shouted with glee or Mildred Graham chuckled delightedly. But no such result was achieved at Altmount. The girls there, with the exception of Pat and perhaps one or two others, all seemed bent upon outdoing their companions in correct social behavior.

A sort of pairing off followed the discussion of Hazel’s ways. That she had a wonderful voice all were willing to concede, but just what Jean meant by her comparison with Gloria was not clear, at least not satisfactorily clear to Gloria, or her special friends, including Pat.

The school cliques, inevitable, were again being set in motion. Clubs or Sororities were forbidden, as they had been the cause of more than one bitter quarrel among the girls in past years, when the faculty had tolerated the Bluejays, or the Social Sixes or even the Gabfesters, but a girl like Jean is sure to lead in a subtle way. Her pronounced opinions are always easier to accept than to combat, and just now she was “making up” something quite “clicquey.”

“The deceitful thing,” murmured Pat, when girl after girl slipped away from the pine needle carpet to follow Jean’s unspoken suggestion. “And she ate more of our pop-corn than any other three eaters added up.”

“Was she a great friend of Hazel’s?” asked Gloria. Her dark eyes were glinting under rather fluttering lids, and a “set expression,” as good old Jane would have described it, seemed to have suddenly burned out Gloria’s happiness fuse.

“Jean is always pals with the airified ones,” said Pat, answering Gloria’s question. “The way she eats them up makes me—suspicious.”

Trixy broke into a genuine laugh. Pat could say the wisest things in the queerest way.

“But I notice she didn’t gobble you up,” went on Pat to Trixy. “How come?”

“Do you suppose I am in the way?” Gloria had not yet found a smile and was plainly pouting.

“Silly baby!” chided Trixy. “If you really have saved me from anything like that——” sweeping a hand toward the departing contingent, “then indeed, I am more than grateful.”

“Oh, I have it,” exploded Pat. “Let’s get up an opposition!”

“To what?” inquired Trixy.

“To—to Jean, of course.”

“I wouldn’t satisfy her to do anything of the sort,” sniffed Gloria.

“But don’t you see they are planning something?” asked Pat.

“Who cares?” retorted Gloria. “I’m getting sort of homesick, I guess, but I just would like a whole day away from—all this.” A suspicion of tears dimmed her eyes.

“You have been a perfect lamb, Glo,” declared Trixy, winding her arm about the younger girl’s shoulders in sympathy. “Never made a mite of trouble.”

“But you are sort of used to—to changing about, aren’t you, Glo?” asked Pat, quite innocently.

“Why, Pat, what do you mean?” demanded Gloria, sensing an undercurrent to the last remark.

“Oh, I don’t mean you have been to other schools, or that sort of thing,” returned Pat, brightening up in alarm at Gloria’s tone, “but you see, Hazel was—talkative, and she told everybody how you lived at her house, and about—your mother being dead and all that.” There was no mistaking Pat’s own sincerity.

“So that’s it!” A wave of understanding flooded over Gloria. “They think I lived on Hazel’s folks! Poor relation——” bitterly.

“Gloria Doane, I won’t have you getting such foolish notions in your pretty head,” interrupted Trixy. “If folks don’t know what you and your dad have done for Hazel and her folks, it is only because you are both too high principled to let it be known.” Trix’s eyes were now flashing and her open defense of Gloria was just what any one knowing Beatrix Travers would have expected.

Gloria smiled cynically. “Just the same, Trix, those girls have no use for the cousin Hazel has told them all about. Not that I mind, really, for I have all I care for, but somehow—Oh, what’s the use?” she broke off sullenly.

“Rudeness is the meanest sort of cut, always,” took up a new voice just as quiet Mary Mears glided up to the little party, from behind the hedge that outlined the path.

“Oh, hello, Mary!” greeted Pat. “Come along and join the wake. You’re welcome,” and she made a place on the big low cut stump.

“I always thought boarding school was composed of sets, little clicques, you know,” continued Mary, “now I’m sure of it. Of course, I’m on the very outer rim——”

“Nothing of the sort,” spoke up Trixy with spirit. “If we care to we may, very easily, have a better, if not bigger, crowd than Jean Engle has. I hate to start things, but as Pat says, there’s no use standing still and applauding their efforts. What do you say, Mary? Shall we organize?”

“I’d love to, but——”

“Now forget the ‘buts’ and let’s!” exclaimed Pat joyfully. “I’ve been in the dumps since Jack went. Never knew how much I depended upon Jack for amusement,” her voice trailed off. “Poor old Jack! I wonder where she is and—why?”

Gloria had not raised her head and therefore could not see the swift change that swept over Mary’s pale face. Trixy again intervened.

“If we organize what is to be our object?” she asked.

“Fun,” snapped Pat.

“Of what sort?” persisted Trixy.

“Oh, every kind. We can’t exactly effect riots in this retreat,” mocked Pat, “but we might get up some highly interesting rows. There’s nothing like a real, tip-top scrap to set the feathers flying.” An anticipatory chuckle gave warning of Pat’s active intentions.

“But really, Trix,” spoke up Gloria, “I have no idea of making a martyr of you on my account. You don’t belong in our baby class and we all know perfectly well that the other girls are crazy to get you in their set, but well, I don’t blame them really, for not wanting to bother with me.”

A ripple of delicious laughter was Trixy’s reply.

“Oh, if you feel that way about it——” began Pat merrily.

All this time Mary appeared to be listening abstractedly. Gloria’s face was serious, with quite an unusual expression for her, but Mary always serious, now seemed actually depressed. The late November day was warm and glowing as any in October, and shadows shot through the giant pine, making murky haloes about the heads beneath. Altogether conditions conspired toward plots and intrigue. It had taken just that long for the usual hikes, lake pleasures, tennis and such sports to lose their interest, and now with the brisk, crisp air of winter’s foreshadow, the pupils at Altmount, naturally, swung to more original forms of recreations.

Pat had been doing most of the talking since Jean so pointedly gathered her chums to other stamping grounds. Of course, Trixy did her best to banish Gloria’s ill humor, the result of that remark from Jean concerning Hazel’s and Gloria’s mannerisms, but the cloud was still there, just as Mary’s moody aloofness was more pronounced as she attempted to hide it.

“Then we’re to have a clan,” repeated Pat. “We’ll ask all the girls who are not manacled to Jean’s ankles.”

“Really, Pat, it wouldn’t be fair to take Trixy from the seniors,” interrupted Gloria.

“Say, Glo!” in quick succession interrupted Pat. “Whatever has come over you? Why the martyr’s crown?”

Gloria swung her chin around and up high in mock contempt. “I was never sure I’d like boarding school,” she remarked evenly. “Now I know I don’t,” she declared emphatically.

“Just because catty Jean Engle digs——”

“No, Pat, that isn’t it. It’s because I’m not the sort that fits in.”

“You’re not the sort that follows the crowd,” broke in Trixy, “but you do fit in, Gloria. Any one can follow the band wagon,” declared Trixy with unmistakable scorn.

“What made you jump so, Mary?” asked the outspoken little Pat. “Do you hate band wagons worse than ‘pizen’?”

“Yes,” said Mary quite helplessly, and even Gloria stared in surprise.

“Seems to me we better adjourn, as the lawyers say ‘sine die.’ We are having such a deplorable time,” concluded Trixy. Even her good nature could be tried too far.

Gloria got to her feet first and looked resolutely at the big building on the hill top.

“Don’t go hating it,” cautioned Trixy, kindly sensing her emotion.

“No, indeed. I’ll have to—conquer it now,” replied Gloria bravely.

“I wish I could feel as you do,” remarked Mary. She was the gloomiest of all.

“How do you feel?” demanded Pat.

“Like running away,” admitted Mary, her lips drawn tight.

“But you wouldn’t! Mary, have you had a sorrow?” asked Trixy impulsively in an undertone.

A quivering lip left words unnecessary.

Trixy linked her arm into Mary’s and the long delayed confidence was under way.

“She’ll cut you out, first thing you know,” warned Pat in Gloria’s nearest ear.

“For Trixy’s sake I hope she does,” declared the sullen girl who even turned aside from Pat’s good-natured arm.

This was the stage of boarding school life usually classified as “the reaction,” and upon just what course the girls would now take depended much of the year’s pleasures or disappointments.

That Gloria and Mary were alike disappointed was very evident, but the cause!

Gloria’s highly sensitive nature was feeling keenly the slights aimed at her by Jean’s contingent, but why Mary Mears should go from the quiet stage to the actual melancholy was puzzling every one.

Would she confide in Trixy?

Would Trixy ever choose any one in Gloria’s place?

And above all, what was the reason that Jacquinot Corday left school several times during the term?

Inquisitive, carefree, little Pat seemed to thrive on the possible replies to such questions, but Gloria’s own heart was too heavy for speculation. She longed for the freedom that lent personal activity, she hated doing things because they should be done, and she was unconsciously preparing for an attack. The smoldering fire is sure to blaze up sometime.

CHAPTER VII
BRONCHO BILLY

“But it isn’t like you to mope, Gloria,” reasoned Trixy, with a suspicion of reproof.

“I know, Trix, but I just feel I am—country!”

“If you mean natural, I’ll agree. The city has a knack of artifice. But why you should let a word from that feather brain, Jean, so affect you?”

“It wasn’t that alone. I’ve felt ever since I came that Hazel had branded me as the poor relation, the little orphan Annie——”

“Oh, Hazel isn’t really mean——”

“No, but she’s so high and mighty that her very compliments sting,” argued the miserable Gloria. “Truly, Trix, I don’t care a rap for myself, but I’ve been selfish about you. They didn’t ask you to ride yesterday, I noticed.”

“I had a glorious canter before their old horses were out of the stalls,” flung back Trixy. “I hate riding in a crowd. It’s like travelling with a party. Every move is subject to the schedule, prearranged. Besides, I made a discovery while out on my run, and if you are a good girl I’ll disclose it to you.”

“Be a lamb and tell me the glad tidings,” coaxed Gloria. “I’m just dying for something new. Don’t you hate the rules and regulations that put us asleep, wake us up, feed us, think for us——”

“Gloria Doane! You little wild oriole, with your black head and new sweater!” laughed Trixy. “I’m afraid you really do need the Altmount discipline. You have been such a free little creature all your life.” Trixy looked absently out the window over the wavering trees, some already leafless, others gorgeously colorful. She was remembering Gloria Doane at her seaside, Barbend home, and again recalling the heroic Gloria, who a few months ago, had fought her way out of a flooded house, where with the little boy, Marty, she had become imprisoned. This was the great adventure related in “Gloria” and comparing the girl of such adventures with the one Trixy now confronted, it was not unreasonable indeed to find her rebelling, straining at the silken cords of Altmount’s restrictions. But Trixy’s life had been very different. The child of wealth is born to responsibilities, and they scarcely ever include escapes from flooded cellars, or the rescue of frightened children surrounding helplessly sick mothers.

“You know, Gloria,” spoke Trixy again, “there really is a lot to learn here. We couldn’t expect to find everything rosy, that would mean deadly monotony.”

“Oh, I know I’m horrid to grumble,” promptly admitted Gloria, “but I do like to do things. There seems so little to do here except follow rules.”

“Why don’t you put on the charmed necklace? That might precipitate an adventure,” suggested Trixy.

“Put it on! No, indeedy. I’m glad it’s on your side of the curtain,” declared Gloria, “for I do get strange fancies concerning the thing. The more I try to solve the mystery of the original owner, the further I get from it. Do you suppose there is some one here not really a pupil——”

“Maggie?” mocked Trixy.

“No. Of course not Maggie. But there are rather queer folks sauntering around. There’s the official mender, for instance. That one who wears a wig to hide her shaved head, according to Pat. Now, she might really own a trunk, and those home-made beads look rather like her. Just imagine me wearing a gift from her.”

Trixy laughed uproariously at the possibility, and she finally decided with Gloria, that the necklace had better be kept in seclusion.

“But I had an adventure this morning,” again promised Trixy.

“Tell me about it,” begged Gloria. “Was there a nice woozy old tramp in it or, mayhap, a plumed knight?”

“Neither. But let’s take our constitutional. These walls—might have ears,” cautioned Trixy.

“So secret as that! Goody!” Gloria executed a little skip over to the curtained closet, snatched her cap off a hook and clapped it on her head. “Every one seems late this morning,” she remarked. “We can have the birch lane all to ourselves. Hurry and give me the thrill. I’m famished for it.”

But as they tried to slip out, more than one hail from peekers in doorways demanded to know whence and why, and evading the rebound of Pat, who dashed into the “lav” and intended to dash out again, was not altogether a simple matter. In fact, the tower stairs were finally used as a means of escape.

“Hurry!” whispered Trixy. “The side door is open.”

“Tell me!” begged Gloria. “I’m fairly quivering with expectancy.”

“It’s about Jack,” began Trixy, catching her breath.

“Is she back?”

“She must be. I saw her before breakfast.”

“Where?”

“That’s my story, but you’re spoiling it all with your unromantic questions. Please, as the witnesses say, let me tell it in my own way.”

“Proceed,” ordered Gloria, with a flourish of her free arm.

“You know I went out very early——”

“I do.”

“But I didn’t waken you. I heard you breathing awake long before.”

“Yes, I was awake. Really, Trix, I’m afraid I was a bit homesick. But never mind me. Can’t you feel me tr-r-r-em-bell, awaiting your story?”

“Walking at this pace is an absorbing occupation,” objected Trixy. “Let’s sit down and talk like civilized folks.”

A squat on the big rustic bench under the Twin Oaks didn’t look very civilized, but it was better for confidence than was racing.

“I was just turning in with ‘Whirlwind’ (he’s a lovely little horse,) when I saw or rather heard a party trotting along from the Sound Road,” began Trixy. “They were on a regular trot and coming like the wind. I pulled to one side to let them pass, and that put me behind the line of low cedars. They couldn’t see me but I faced them——”

“Who?”

“I only recognized one. Jack. You should have seen her! She looked like a poster girl.”

“Jack!”

“Yes. Her hair was loose, it must have fallen from under her hat, a brown felt, and her habit! It wasn’t a habit at all, but shirt and trousers like a regular little Broncho Billy!”

“Our Jack——”

“Yes, indeed. I might not have believed my eyes if my ears hadn’t helped. Just as her horse swung into the lane she called to him. It was certainly Jack’s voice,” declared Trixy, still mildly excited over the unusual encounter.

“And who was with her? You said others——” prompted Gloria, foreseeing an interesting escapade in Jack’s assuming the rôle of a Broncho Billy.

“Yes, there was a woman and she also was an expert rider, besides—now get a good long breath, Glo, you’ll need it,” warned Trixy. “The other member of the wild rider’s troupe was a perfectly stunning looking young fellow.”

“Oh, how delightful! Oh, how exciting,” sighed Gloria. “How ever has Jack kept such a plot all to herself?”

“Perhaps she hasn’t. You forget we are comparative strangers.”

“And out of the confidence club,” a hint of yesterday’s bitterness flashed through that remark.

“But what particularly struck me,” resumed Trixy, ignoring the cynicism, “was the wonderful mounts, the absolute expertness of those three riders. They certainly are professionals,” she insisted.

“Oh, I have it!” exclaimed Gloria. “My trunk mystery! Jack belongs to—to a troupe!”

“A troupe!” For a moment Trixy was mystified.

“You know,” insisted Gloria, “the strange trunk I opened? And all the—glittering stuff?”

“Oh, yes. Of course. You—we have never solved that mystery——”

“And Jack is always so sort of spectacular! Oh Trix, do you really think she might belong to a circus?”

“A circus! How ever could a circus performer get into Altmount?”

“That’s so. This is rather an exclusive place. I recall that your mother had to vouch for me.”

“Gloria Doane! You are a perfect little simpleton! No one had to vouch for you. Your own mother attended one of the Alton schools and her name was an excellent voucher. All my mater had to do was to——”

“Say she knew me, and my dad, and all the rest of the family!” Scorn mocked the words.

Trixy tossed her head back impatiently. Gloria’s humility was plainly far from genuine, but she swung quickly to her friend’s side and threw an affectionate arm around her.

“Darling Trix,” she whispered. “I am getting to be a horrid prig, I know it. Just plain vanity, of course. But for mercy sakes, tell me about Jack’s chariot race. We’ll have to go indoors directly and I haven’t heard half.”

“There really isn’t any more to tell,” replied Trixy. She smiled forgiveness into Gloria’s eyes, however. “They had ridden a long distance, that was evident, and I just wish you could have seen what a raving beauty Jack looked.”

“War paint.”

“Strange I never thought of that, I do believe she might have had some queer color on her face——”

“What fun!” cried Gloria, springing to her feet and threatening to dance. “Do you suppose we’ll see her in all her togs? Which way did she go? Didn’t you even shout at her?”

“No, to your last question but I couldn’t keep track of the others. I was so surprised when I recognized her I couldn’t even shout. Besides, all three seemed very serious. I would not have dared break in on them. Who, do you suppose, the woman was?”

“Her Steppy, of course, stepmother, you know. It is she, according to friend Pat, who drags Jack away in the night. Perhaps she does, too, if she’s a trouper,” reasoned Gloria.

“Well, at any rate, Glo, I guess we have discovered something. I know you’ve been aching for it, and I feel, somehow, a chunk, a good sized chunk of your special brand of excitement has actually arrived.”

“You don’t mean that Jack will come out and declare herself!” exclaimed Gloria. “Perhaps we won’t see or hear another word about it.” That possibility brought gloom.

“But others saw her,” reasoned Trixy. They were now retracing their steps and about to meet a group of girls also returning from their early morning exercise.

“Who saw her?” asked Gloria.

“I don’t know just who it was, but certainly some very slim girl dodged me, as I walked back from the stables. It looked a bit like Mary.”

“Oh, we’ll ask her,” declared Gloria. “At any rate Mary’s getting so friendly it would be nice to sort of take her in our confidence. Don’t you think so?”

“Well——” Trixy paused. Then continued: “Suppose we don’t say anything for a while and just see what happens. I wouldn’t want her to start anything sensational, you know.”

“Oh, of course. There, you see, I would have blurted out the whole fantastic story and perhaps made a mortal enemy of the picturesque Jack. After all, Trixy, I am country and green, don’t you think so?”

“Have it your own way,” replied Trixy with a light laugh. “I don’t intend to go on forever telling you what a darling you are.”

But she looked as if she might go on doing so for quite a while longer.

CHAPTER VIII
ALMOST A TRAGEDY

An unusual amount of school work filled the day beyond possibility of moods, broods or other tantrums. Gloria was not so temperamental as to neglect her work for “blues,” whatever the cause or however deep the shade. She was no baby, and was too proud to do otherwise than very well in any school records.

There were, reasonably enough, many spots unfinished in her preparatory work, for Barbend, like other country schools, embraced only such work as seemed to afford the best opportunities for the largest number, and few there were who prepared for high class boarding schools. Thus Gloria now found herself filling in many recreational hours with special tutors in sheltered corners of gloomy rooms. All of which added to her growing uneasiness, for Gloria was the type that loves to soar, like the butterfly, but a single prick in a delicate wing is sure to bring down the joy bird.

Yet Jack’s rough rider adventure promised a thrill. Lessons would be disposed of as quickly as their importance would allow, and then Gloria would, first look for Pat and then, perhaps, they both might look for the romantic rider of the mountain trail.

The prospect whipped up Gloria’s lagging spirits to the bubbling point. She sensed mystery, she hoped for a real lark, somehow all the restraint of Altmount seemed mere atmosphere in the secret contemplation of that one, fearless girl, with that handsome young man and the “Steppy,” possibly with all the fairy tale attributes of horrid gray hair, a witch’s face, a crone’s raspy voice and everything! How perfectly delicious! A story fit for any one, even the insatiable Pat. So it was that all day, in spite of the extra drill preparing for tests, Gloria involuntarily made pictures of Jacquinot Corday, the girl bareback rider, champion circus performer, etc.

“Just imagine Jean and her crowd actually associating with a circus rider,” she ruminated. “And wouldn’t Pat howl gleefully!”

She longed to talk it over with Trixy, but the difference in their grades meant almost complete separation of the chums during the school hours, and even Pat must have been critically busy, for not a glimpse of her red head broke the sombre shadow of Gloria’s horizon all the long day.

Nor did Jack herself appear on the scene. After lunch and before the second afternoon period, Gloria deliberately sought out Pat. She was discovered in a head-on collision with a large, green covered book, whose make up indicated helps for the helpless, “trots” for the weary, and suggestions for those struggling in the tangled ways of English Lit.

“Hello, yourself!” mumbled Pat, anticipating a greeting. “Yes, I’m nearly dead, how do you feel yourself?”

Gloria laughed outright. “Poor old Pat!” she soothed. “What’s the worst thing in life just now?”

“That old goggle-eyed dame that’s supposed to teach us Lit., but really blasts our young dreams with her crazy ideas of original work.” Scorn fairly sizzed through the ill chosen words. “The idea of giving us such a theme as ‘Modern Cynicism! Its effect on Youth.’ Now, if you ask me what is the effect of cynicism on youth, I would just answer ‘Mary Mears.’ She’s the result of that effect.”

“Oh, Pat, cheer up!” quoth Gloria. “Have you seen Jack?”

“Seen Jack?” incredulously.

“Yes. She’s back, isn’t she?”

“She isn’t, is she?”

Gloria laughed. “I heard she was——”

“And I heard she wasn’t.”

“Honestly, Pat, joking aside, isn’t Jack back?”

“No joking to put aside. I hate to repeat, considering the English Lit. and google-eyed Rachel Sander’s hopes for real stuff, but choose a new style, Glo, and come right out frank and honest. Tell me what you mean by your bag full of question marks. Who saw Jack and when?”

“Why——” The word was drawled to hide rather than to disclose any meaning.

“Now you’re holding back,” declared the keen witted Pat, deliberately folding over a half page of the big book. “What do you know about Jack? I am almost dead since she left. Jack is a human blotter, wipes out all the day’s blots with her dashing surprises. There, I almost went literary that time, didn’t I? Although I could see Jack making more blots than she obliterated. Another good word,” with ready pencil noted, “and I’ll stick in some place if I have to obliterate Rachel with it,” declared Pat. “Meanwhile, Glo, I’m waiting to hear the news.”

“That’s exactly what I came for,” flung back Gloria, “and you haven’t even asked me to sit down.”

“Do.”

“Where?”

“Oh, I’m rather crowded,” with a supercilious glance at her untidy room. “You see, every one comes in to help me and they eat my fudge, look in my mirror, try my powder and Blanche Baldwin tried my comb.”

“May I try your trunk?”

“Certainly. Help yourself, although that’s a perfectly brand new trunk and it almost got lost in the shuffle. Wait, I’ll fix the cover nice and smooth. There,” and as she shook the Indian blanket to replace it as a cover, Gloria saw a black enamelled trunk, exactly like the one she had opened by mistake!

“Your trunk—is just like mine,” she said, as naturally as her surprise permitted.

“Really? I thought I was very much ahead in trunks,” said Pat, easily. “Although I believe the salesman did say the style was going merrily. Glad my key is registered, if it did give me a lot of trouble when I lost it by taking too good care of it.”

“Registered?” Gloria repeated, recalling her experience with the same key fitting the two trunks.

“Yes. That’s a feature of this trunk, and if yours is like it don’t lose your key. There is only one of a kind made, a little difference in each lock, I presume, so the owner is supposed to be key proof. But why this digression? Do you think I am interested in mechanics rather than in Jack?”

“No,” said Gloria, recovering her composure. That trunk mystery seemed to be burying itself deeper daily. Of course she never dreamed of little Pat being a “pirate’s daughter,” but the sudden view of a trunk apparently just like the one in question, had startled her. Now, she must appease Pat’s curiosity without divulging even a hint of Trixy’s early morning adventure, and this would be no simple matter, Gloria knew from experience.

“I’m scared to death of the exams,” she admitted, by way of introduction. “It seems to me, I have done nothing for weeks but try to patch up holes in my prep. work. I wonder if I shall ever be able to stand the college entrance exams?”

“Don’t try. Isn’t this hard enough?” The “trot” book came in for a demonstrative slam.

“But I want to go in for science,” explained Gloria. “You see my early training——”

“Oh, ye-ah, so early you’ll forget it before the educational day is half over,” prophesied Pat. “But about Jack. Let’s go hunt her up. I’ll bet she’s got a wild story to relate, and a wild story would just about save my life this very minute.”

“Don’t tempt Fate,” cautioned Gloria.

“Tempt Fate! I’d bribe the dear old thing if I knew what she liked best. Come along, Snooksy. Let’s hope for the best, or worst, if you feel as I do about it.”

“But your English? Didn’t I interrupt——”

“A real mercy. When Patricia Halliday goes in for cramming, I tell you, chile, she sure does cram. Oh boy!” The chuckle that verified this also repudiated it, as Pat said, according to one’s viewpoint.

The search for Jack began with a little twittering whistle along the corridor, leading up to “fourteen” the number on a partly opened door.

“You’re right. The prodigal has returned,” whispered Pat, dodging past Jean’s door and actually bending double as she sprinted past Edna Hobb’s. “Plugging away” for the quarterly exams meant that rooms might hide the anxious students in their safest corners.

But the open door proved a false alarm. Jack was not found within.

“She has been here,” reasoned Gloria. “Here’s her bag and there’s her hat.”

“Surest thing. She may be down telling it all to Alty. Let’s peek,” suggested Pat.

Gloria’s critical eye swept the room. No sign of rough-rider outfit was in sight. Instead, there were the tweed top coat, the smart rainbow sport hat, and a very much beaded one piece, brown silk jersey dress. Jack was noted for showy clothes, and they were always of a very good and costly quality.

Beads suggested the trunk secret to Gloria’s mind, and even the brown, slinking, silky gown, that should have been put away in a box, and wasn’t, hinted the iridescent grandeur that lay so helplessly in the top of the strange trunk. That, and the big gem labelled “Precious” in the envelope, and the consequent necklace all were now recalled.

“Yes,” she was deciding, “it surely must have been Jack’s trunk. But what could the materials have been used for? And if the stone in the envelope really were precious why should it have been left to the uncertain travel of ordinary baggage?”

In line with that secret reasoning Pat uncannily remarked:

“You know, I have always thought Jack is just hiding something with all her show off. I wouldn’t wonder but she’s as deep as a well underneath the surface.”

“Why should she hide anything?” Gloria asked. They were on the second landing and now safe from possible interruptions.

“The Steppy, you know. She surely is a queer one. You just ought to hear her pass remarks, about one o’clock A. M. in the lower hall with the mezzanine floor lined with listening ladies! What the girls don’t guess isn’t worth considering. Guessing is their one strong line. But I like Jack, you know, Gloria, and I’m not catty enough to join in the slaughter.”

“I can’t see why girls are so—so snobbish,” returned Gloria.

“Born that way, like hare lips,” said Pat, now ready to “peek” in the office door, which, like others, stood ajar.

“Oh!”

Both girls exclaimed, for instead of peeking in the door they almost collided with demure little Miss Taylor.

“Looking for Miss Alton?” she asked agreeably.

“Oh, no,” replied Pat. “The fact is, we are trying to (whisper) dodge her. But have you seen Jack Corday?”

“Why, no. She is away, is she not?”

“Was, but isn’t,” answered Pat. Gloria was not yet so familiar even with the amiable Miss Taylor as to join in the repartee.

“Oh, is she back?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Gloria did say that. She felt obliged to say something, and she smiled audibly to heighten the effect.

“When you ought to be poring over your books. Well, I haven’t seen Jack and I’m in charge of the office,” announced Miss Taylor.

“Oh, is Alty away?” squealed Pat.

“Tem-por-air-i-ly!” Miss Taylor was not much more than a school girl herself.

“The berries!” cheered Pat. “Come along, Glo, and continue the hunt. If Jack is in Altmount we’ll find her! Let exams take care of themselves for a while,” and she dragged the willing Gloria along, out through the heavy doors, down the deserted path making straight for the gym.

“If she’s around she’ll surely be walking a ceiling or resting up on double flips. She’s the queerest girl. Hard work is her idea of loafing.”

All this increased Gloria’s suspicion. It sounded too much like circus ability to be anything else.

But no Jack was found in the gym, either walking ceilings, or doing double flips.

“Well, perhaps she is in some corner of the Wigwam, safe in the arms of the babes,” suggested Pat, rather disconsolately. “Let’s give up the hunt and go along the lake drive for a change. I really must work hard to make up some points, and perhaps a real lively walk will tune me up.”

“I need one myself,” agreed Gloria. “How is this pace?”

“Suits me. You do take lovely long steps for such a little girl.”

“I’m not little. I expect to be tall and imposing like Trix, some day,” announced Gloria.

“Isn’t the air wonderful?” Patricia Halliday was getting a better complexion with every stride.

“This is one fine feature of Altmount,” declared Gloria. “Even Barbend of my fairy childhood dreams, was not better supplied with beautiful walks.”

At a rapid pace the two students confronted the brisk November air. It was exhilarating, delightful.

Then suddenly both halted! Neither spoke but gasped.

Upon the bank of the lake, in the narrow strip of green that folded the path from the water were—garments!

“Jack’s sweater!” gasped Pat.

“And her—tam!” added Gloria.

Startled they stooped over the glaring green coat and hat.

“How could they come here?” breathed Gloria.

“She must have brought them. But where can she be?”

Somehow a coat and hat by the side of a lashing lake seemed ominous. No more joking about Jack’s uncanny athletic ability. Neither suggested she might be up a tree, or——

“Oh!” screamed Gloria. “I see a canoe paddle. Pat, look!”

“Away out in the torrent!” gasped Pat. “Oh, Gloria, if——”

“And see! There’s—the—canoe——!”

“Empty!” brave little Pat seemed suddenly helpless and leaned, for a moment, on the terrified Gloria. A rush of horror seized them. What if Jack——

“Pat! What shall we do! Can you swim?” cried Gloria.

“Swim! In that ice water?”

“But if we could reach the canoe! She might be near it!”

“Gloria Doane! Don’t you dare think of such a thing.”

“I’ve got to, Pat. I’m a safe swimmer, and the canoe is not so far out. Here, help me out of my things, I’ll bring the canoe back, at least.”

“Gloria!”

But the next moment there was a splash, then the waving up and down of lithe, white arms, as stroke after stroke took Gloria further from land and nearer the drifting canoe.

The impetuous act had been prompted by an irresistible impulse. Gloria Doane of Barbend, the seaside town, knew well the price of a moment’s delay against the water’s cruelty, and neither the current nor the icy lake could restrain her.

Pat watched the flashing arms and the small dark head, fascinated. Then she screamed, wildly, shrilly, until the terror in her voice penetrated the hills and reached the very walls of Altmount.

Distracted she screamed again and called for help, until presently answering voices bore down, and girl after girl came racing to the lakeside.

All eyes focussed upon the speck in the water, but now Gloria was beside the canoe and the girls waited breathlessly.

To get into a canoe from the water is an expert’s task, but Gloria was that. She placed herself in direct line with the crescent bow, put both hands up, one on either side, and slid in like some humanized fish. What she then saw appalled her.

A mute figure lay on the bottom of the boat!

And the white face of Jacquinot Corday seemed frozen there in deathlike immobility.

“Oh,” choked Gloria. “Jack! Dear Jack!”

But the drifting little bark still clipped the waves playfully, innocent of the danger now so fearful to Gloria.

“Oh!” she gasped, “what shall I do? No paddle!” But water like fire must be met with heroic measures, and with a strength surprising to herself she managed to rip loose two slats from the side of the canoe, then quickly she slipped from Jack’s inert form a thin white skirt. Jabbing each slat through this she constructed a sail, and holding them in place above her, she felt the wind take hold and drive them forward.

Not until she had veered the boat on its direct course toward shore, did she have opportunity to look critically upon Jack.

“Jack?” she called anxiously. Then she saw one limp hand raised feebly. She peered down closer but there was no further movement.

Jack was not dead but unconscious!

She must be revived, quickly. The girls upon the bank were shouting, calling, but Gloria edged up carefully. Then she cupped a handful of water and splashed it upon the deathlike features.

Just a fluttering of the eyelids rewarded this test. Then Gloria took her sail in both hands, held it bravely to the breeze and drove back to the shore, where frantic companions awaited, helpless.

“Oh!” yelled Pat, “didn’t—you—see—”

“I have her! She’s here!” called back Gloria, sailing in like some heroic war maiden, clad only in her thin underslip, but unmindful of the dripping water and the cutting frosty air.

“Gloria!” came a blend of voices.

“Be careful,” she answered. “I guess—she has—fainted!”

GLORIA HELD HER “SAIL” WITH BOTH HANDS
Gloria at Boarding School. [Page 95]

CHAPTER IX
FROM ICY WATERS

“Here, Gloria, get into this and run! We’ll take care of Jack.”

Trixy gave this order, with it wrapping a heavy coat around Gloria, who was still standing in that pitiful little wet slip.

“I’m all right,” she declared, chattering.

But Pat was almost hysterical. “She’ll die! She’ll get pneumonia! And Jack! Oh, Jack must be dead——”

“Here, Pat, chase along with Gloria and don’t let her stop, do you hear? Race her like a horse, right up to the house. Keep her blood pumping——”

“All right,” agreed Pat, grasping Gloria’s hand and starting off with her. Action was what she needed.

Meanwhile Jack had opened her eyes, dazedly and so unlike the happy, mocking girl she had been in that time, now so hard to recall, but only a day or two ago.

Quickly her companions made an emergency chair of willing arms and carried her up the short cut, directly to the side door of Altmount. Her tawny head rested against Trixy’s shoulder, and it was Mary Mears who held Trixy’s hand beneath the helpless form. Mary’s face was alight and eager, her manner was quickened into expert generalship, and even the absorbing emergency did not prevent Trixy from noting this startling change. Then, there was jolly Pat gone off into hysteria, blaming herself for not being able to do anything else. Naturally Gloria had done the rescuing. Her childhood training at the water’s edge in Barbend gave her skill, while her own instinctive courage provided the inspiration. The other girls were shouting, wailing, gasping and were otherwise “plain silly,” so useless, so confusing, but Mary Mears, she was suddenly the executive.

“We’ll have her around all right presently,” she said calmly to Trixy. “Keep the girls back, Norma, we’ll go straight up.”

Within the house they laid Jack down, very flat, upon the floor, and again the girls were banished, although the procession from the lakeside was loathe to disband.

Little Miss Taylor was too frightened to do more than approve of the efficiency shown by Trixy and Mary, and even the cynical Jean Engle looked on in unstinted admiration.

An hour later Jack lay on her own bed, blinking painfully.

“Wasn’t I the goose——” she mumbled.

“No, indeed,” replied Mary. “You were uncannily wise. If you hadn’t slipped down, like a tired bird, into the safety of that nest when you felt the dizziness coming, you most certainly would have slipped overboard. But there’s nothing to worry about now, you will be as fine as ever in a day or two.”

“Mary,” she whispered, “could I just speak to Gloria? I won’t talk—long.”

“Wouldn’t I do?” Mary’s voice was plaintive. She seemed so eager for the sick girl’s confidence.

“If you don’t mind, Mary, I want Gloria—to do something for me. She’s so——”

“Oh, all right, I know. Of course,” agreed Mary. “But Miss Taylor insists upon quiet until you have been looked over by the doctor.”

Jack turned wearily upon her pillow, and at the mention of “doctor” a deep frown gathered upon her still pale face.

“It really isn’t anything to be alarmed about,” she sighed. “I was simply tired, went out for a bracer in the strong air, and somehow——”

“We know, dear,” soothed Mary. “But with Miss Alton away, of course, Miss Taylor must be extra careful.”

Her voice droned down to a lull, for the patient was dozing off as if from exhaustion. While Mary and Trixy were attending to Jack, another scene was being enacted down the corridor.

In Pat’s room, where she insisted Gloria be taken, a rather noisy operation was being performed. The “rub down” being administered was vigorous to the point of violence.

“Leave me a hoof!” wailed Gloria. She was trying to retrieve “the hoof” Edna was working on.

“Think we ought to roll her?” suggested Blanche who had taken part in the other features of the reviving orgy.

“Just to show our appreciation,” inserted Jean. The last of the pure alcohol was solemnly poured over two refractory feet, the same being pinioned by Patsy, who held a useless basin beneath.

“Oh, now, girls!” begged little Ethel. “No fair! She’s tired and warm as toast. Look at her cheeks!”

They were well worth looking at. As were Gloria’s dark eyes, “shooting stars,” according to a delighted little “freshie,” Naomie, who managed to slip in during the excitement. And Gloria’s head tied up in Pat’s best silk banner, the red one, brother Tom sent from his school, gave the prostrate but by no means quiescent Gloria, a very spectacular appearance, indeed.

Finally, the alcohol exhausted and some of the practitioner strength along with it, Pat, the leader, called a halt. They had been rubbing, drying and according to the patient, bouncing Gloria around from pillow to cushion, and between times to the floor, for fully an hour, so delighted were they with the excitement, and determined to make a good job out of it, and the result was now a case of glow.

“Putting the ‘glow’ in Gloria,” chuckled Pat. She was reacting from her frenzy of hysteria and would be at “concert pitch” for days to come.

“Let me up! Help! Don’t smother me! There! Where’s my own duds?” begged the girl surrounded by “her admiring friends.”

“Oh let’s,” lisped Ethel. “Let’s put her in that glorious red robe.”

“Say!” snapped Pat, “if you put any more glory in this bird she’ll flutter off to paradise. I’m so glad my name’s plain Pat.”

Nevertheless, the red robe was being applied. Then, a pair of silly little satin mules, with gold tassels, were put on Gloria’s feet, while an uncertain throne was erected among cushions from many adjacent rooms, and some further off down the hall. Thereon was installed the heroine.

“If I live to be a hundred I’ll never forget it,” declared Pat. “To see her come sailing in with poor Jack’s petticoat at full mast——”

“Is she all right?” broke in Gloria. The surrounding mirth only followed an assurance of Jack’s favorable condition, and even now a scout was kept busy running up and down the hall, reporting snatches of words or indications, surreptitiously gathered from the crack at Jack’s door.

“Sleeping nicely,” announced the outpost, Janet Thornton. “And the doctor’s about due. Mary is still with her.”

“Mary?” repeated Gloria.

“Yes. One more strange thing that has developed on top of the accident,” explained Jean, who never missed the critical aspect of anything, “is the evolution of Mary. She’s as wise as an owl, as quick as a wink and——”

“As strong as a lion,” finished up Pat, smacking her lips gleefully.

“I always thought she was posing——”

But Jean got no further. She was wilted by the flash of the many condemning eyes.

“Be human, Jean,” whispered Maud Hunter. “The idols are changing. Can’t you see Glo, Trix and Mary are the new trio?” Maud was just human enough herself to enjoy the dethronement of Jean.

“What I can’t fathom,” returned Pat, who had propped herself up on Gloria’s left and was now licking a home-made lollypop, “is why you dashed out, risking life and limb, after what seemed to be an empty canoe? Why, I ask you?”

“Just the sailor’s instinct of rescuing anything helpless on the water,” said Gloria quietly. “The canoe seemed to be having a good time but it couldn’t make shore——”

“Comes of being born a hero! A real, natural hero,” interjected Edna. “I have always heard that the——”

“Needle of a mariner’s compass always points north,” paraphrased Janet. “Edna, we can’t exactly build bon-fires and have parades until Jack is able to tell her story, so save some ammunition.”

“Jack’s story!” repeated Edna excitedly. “Oh, what a thrill that’ll be!”

“Why?” interrupted Pat, immediately on the defensive. “Was there anything thrilling in going faint in a canoe?”

“But why the canoe?” This was from Jean in her most caustic tone.

“Why not the canoe?” flung back Gloria.

“In November?”

“Certainly, or in December if one cared to,” Gloria slipped away from the most becoming cushion as she defended Jack. “For my part, I think water sports in the cooler weather lots more fun than in the broiling summer time.”

“Uh-huh!” chanted Pat. “We see you do. Has that cake of ice melted off your left biceps yet?” A lunge at the biceps went after the answer. “Gloria Doane, star swimmer of Lake Manypeaks, champion rescuer of floating canoes, and otherwise, notwithstanding and all the same, a fairish sort of girl——”

“Here, Pat, get your breath!” ordered Gloria forcibly, checking the flattering outburst. “We haven’t any more alcohol, and you’re too lumpy to rub easily.”

“Now, there,” choked Pat, “you spoiled my speech. I was going to say——What on earth was I going to say?”

“You said it,” retorted Jean. “We were discussing the unusual procedure of canoeing in winter. Gloria was for it, you know, but then, Gloria is from a sea coast town, aren’t you?”

“If she hadn’t been, I just wonder when and how we would have found poor Jack?” That from Pat settled Jean’s attempt at the usual “country girl” slur. Gloria turned her head up regally, however, and a couple of sniffs from her sympathisers were aimed directly at Jean. Somehow Jean couldn’t stay good natured long enough to even encourage the mood.

A commotion in the hall brought every girl up alertly.

“The doctor’s come——” lisped Edna.

“Come? Just with Jack now?” asked Gloria.

“And gone,” continued Edna, without a break in her voice.

“What did he say?”

“What’s the matter?”

“Is she all right?”

“Can’t we go in now?”

“Is Mary still on guard?”

“What’s Trixy doing?”

“Has Alty come back?”

“Oh, say,” protested Pat. “What is this, anyway? A spelling bee? Go ahead, Neddie. Tell us all you know and don’t strangle under it.”

“All I know is,” went on Edna, panting from the importance of her message, “Mary came to the door and told the kitchen girl——”

“Her name is Tillie, Edna,” volunteered Janet.

“All right. Mary told Tillie to fetch a hot foot bath——”

“Oh, maybe it’s pneumonia.”

“Shut up, Ethel. Go ahead, Ned,” ordered Pat.

“I don’t think it’s pneumonia, for I heard Jack laugh——”

“Oh, they do sometimes,” Gloria swallowed her own chuckle. “A laugh really isn’t a serious symptom.”

“Now, don’t tease Edna when she’s just panting with sheer exertion and trying to answer your silly questions,” interceded Blanche. “If some of you had to duck in and out that hall, under doctor’s bags, hot water bags, and steaming hot baths——”

But Edna was through. She knew when she was being teased and she hated it. Not another word could any one, even Gloria, coax or cajole out of her.

It was getting late, almost dark, and the excitement was now momentarily subsiding. In Jack’s room Miss Taylor, Trixy and Mary were all trying to reconcile her to obey the doctor’s orders.

“An overstrained heart,” the gray haired man had pronounced the case, and “positive rest, no physical activities, not even prolonged walking” went with his directions.

Jack protested. She had had such spells before and always rebounded in a day or two. Why all the restriction?

When Trixy, over at a far end of the room, inadvertently heard Dr. Briggs ask what special effort had brought on the attack, she wondered about that early morning wild ride, down from Mount Major. But Jack had not admitted it, in fact she replied to the doctor that nothing more than just “a played-out feeling” could have been responsible. And she had taken the canoe ride to brace up, she felt the need of strong currents of air, but they, evidently, were either too strong or she was too exhausted to do otherwise than “keel over.”

When the doctor had gone and it was possible for her to get a word with Trixy, Jack managed to repeat the request she had made to Mary.

“I must speak with Gloria,” she whispered, while Trixy smoothed a pillow. “Won’t you fix it—for me?”

And Trixy nodded an unmistakable assent.

CHAPTER X
JACK’S STORY

As the real alarm subsided a tendency to withdraw “within themselves and gloat over the whole delicious thrill” (from Pat’s pronouncement,) was shamefully evident.

Tests and exams furnished a reasonable excuse, so far as loyalty to Jack and the now idolized Gloria, was concerned, yet the interruptions imposed by some of the most studious and dependable, seemed to threaten traditions of Altmount and possibly shift the honors.

Gloria was determined to come out first in the English tests. Reading under her father’s guidance from childhood, she had easily acquired an advantage over the average student, and she felt confident now that her essay would have a fair chance of winning first.

To send it to dad! To have him read his own thoughts, as he used to give them to me! All his original ideas and his real pet theory of woodland relations! She was working hour after hour upon the theme, and it would be done in time. The contest would close in two days more and when tests were over there would still be time for some extra polishing.

Then Jack’s accident interrupted.

And now, the evening after, Jack wanted to talk to her “all alone,” Trixy said so.

“My own special thrill,” she replied to Trixy. “But I do hope it will not be too secret to share with you—and Pat.”

“And Mary,” added Trixy. “You have no idea, Glo, what a girl Mary is. I’m going to invite her out to Sandford with me after exams are over. I believe we will have a week, and they houseclean while we are gone.”

“Well, I’ll run along to Jack,” Gloria said. “Somehow I sort of hate——”

“Oh, you needn’t worry that she’ll gush over the heroic rescue,” interrupted Trixy. “Jack is as sobered as if she had just dashed through the rapids. There is, plainly, something worrying her. I hope she won’t transfer the worry to you, little girl,” affection warmed the sentence, “for I’m just as proud and a bit more proud of you than are any of the others. After all, you are my own special little Gloria.” The flushed cheek was pressed with Trixy’s eager lips and for a few moments they became again the chums they used to be, before Altmount, the fashionable boarding school, had imposed its estranging influence.

“Trixy,” breathed Gloria, “you do love me—a little?”

“A lot. Why shouldn’t I?”

“Oh, you know, I can’t forget Jean’s idea of a country girl!”

“Queer you do forget mine.” Another frank embrace from the “wonderful girl born to gentility” was bestowed upon Gloria. “But run along to Jack. We have posted signs to keep the coast clear, so improve the shining moments. And oh, Gloria,” as her little friend attempted to leave, “be careful to agree with her if you possibly can. The doctor was none too sure of her condition.”

“I’ll promise everything but my one chum,” said Gloria, “and neither Jack nor Mary can have her.”

“Nor my little Glo girl, either,” returned Trixy, still beaming her affection. “Somehow, I’ll be rather glad to have her all to myself for a little vacation. But aren’t we ‘crushy’?” laughed the older girl affecting a foolish pose.

“As if something threatened to separate us.”

“Run along before I weep——”

“This time sure.”

When the door closed Trixy went over to Gloria’s dresser. As if reflecting, uncertainly, she opened the drawer and drew out a little Japanese basket. Removing the cover by its beaded tassel, she gazed upon the largest and most noticeable article within. It was the string of jade beads, sent anonymously to Gloria and which she had never worn.

“Could Jack have sent these?” she mused. “And yet——” A pause as she fingered the dull gray green necklace. “If they are really genuine they must be very valuable,” she reflected. “And they must have belonged with the glittering trunk stuff that greeted Gloria’s arrival.”

She slipped the beads over her head and looked in the mirror.

“I’m glad I’m here with the little girl now,” she decided. “I’ve always heard that the chief attraction at boarding school was the opportunity of meeting girls from all parts of the country, but now I’m inclined to think it is the opportunity of meeting all kinds of girls! Heigh-o!” and the beads were slid back into the black Japanese basket with the coral beads and brass rings. “There, I wonder if my little black beauty will ever wear these?”

At Jack’s door Gloria was listening. Miss Taylor was just about to leave and she greeted Gloria pleasantly.

“It’s lovely of you to come and sit with her for a few minutes,” she said, “because I know you are working so hard on exams. I heard what a fine outline you handed in to Miss Sanders.”

“Thanks,” said Gloria. “You know I love English, so it’s a pleasure to work in Miss Sanders’ class.”

The little lady slipped away smiling. It was very evident she had faith in the work Gloria was doing, and her manner clearly implied it was very good work indeed.

But Jack was waiting.

“Gloria!” exclaimed Jack, before the girl just coming in had time to offer her own greeting. “Gloria Doane, my rescuer!”

“Bosh!” flushed Gloria, hating the flame in her cheeks. “I had the best swim ever. The best I’ve had since I came up here.”

“Oh, I know. You’re sure to duck compliments; all the same, you saved little Jack’s useless life.”

“You would have drifted in——”

“Not possibly. The wind cut straight for the falls, and queer thing—say, Glo,” she broke off, “sit down, do. Right here beside the bed. I’m all set for a lot of whispering.”

This was Jack. She smiled the twisted little quirk that pinched from the corners of her mouth, and her gray eyes showed some worth while glints in spite of the doctor’s prescriptions.

“But a canoe is a safe floater, after all,” insisted the modest Gloria. “You might even——”

“Have gone over the falls, and landed right side up with care. Hardly. However, I knew you were there, I almost knew you were coming, that is, I could feel rescue, and who, other than Gloria, would have come, so promptly?”

Gloria slipped into the chair with an air of passivity. She was not pretending to be modest, she felt foolish against the batter of a compliment as if it pricked her sense of duty, for, she reasoned, who would not have gone after that canoe just as she had done, if they felt as secure in the water as she always felt?

“And that icy cold!” again Jack recalled.

“I’ve often done it in winter, just to show off.”

Jack beamed. Her admiration was no more pretense than was Gloria’s modesty. The buttercup boudoir cap looked “sweet,” on Jack, and her gray eyes were beginning to reflect the return of strength.

“Fancy my going off like that,” she complained. “But I have a long story to tell you, Glowie, so I’d best brace up——”

“Don’t, please, if you feel the effort,” begged Gloria, actually fearful. “They say hearts are the trickiest things when they get on a rampage.”

“I know. But I’ve got to tell you some things, Gloria. I just can’t have my stepmother come here,” began Jack with a brave effort. “She’s all right, and as good as gold, when she isn’t crossed; but these girls——”

“I know. I’ve felt the sting a little myself,” admitted Gloria. “You see, I’m an out and out country girl, and green.”

“So was Joan of Arc, and a beauty at that,” broke in the sick girl. “Now, I’m willing to own up to a fraud, I do pretend a lot just for the fun of ‘stringing’ Jean and her crowd. They’re such sillies.” The scorn that surrounded the term condoned its vulgarity. Gloria smiled her own acquiescence. Jack continued:

“I’ll have to be very personal to make myself clear,” she said. “My dad was a very rich man—a big business man.” As she paused Gloria dismissed the term Pirate’s Daughter as belonging to Jack. A big business man is hardly a pirate, that is not in the usual acceptance of the term. Therefore, that trunk full of possible loot could hardly have belonged to Jack. Neither could she have given Gloria the queer necklace. Somehow she, Gloria, was conscious of relief with the conviction.

“And he left me a lot of money,” went on Jack, neither pride nor assurance tingeing the statement. “Well,” she sighed, “you see, he married Steppy, sort of out of gratitude. She had nursed him through a dangerous fever, and she didn’t save herself in the task either. Steppy is a trump, but you see——” A conscious pause. Then, “You see, she never had any chance of education and she has always associated with rough people, but even that can’t hurt a kind heart, Gloria.” This was a tribute and Gloria appreciated its value.

“Yes,” she agreed, “a good kind heart doesn’t depend on circumstances nor upon education. Jane, she’s my near-mother, she always said, kind hearts were all the angels left us when they ‘shooed’ us out of paradise.”

“I guess so,” sighed Jack, abstractedly. “But I’ll have to hurry.” A furtive glance at the door told why. “You see, when dad died he left my fortune” (she smiled) “all nicely done up and parcelled out so I could get a little package ever so often. And he gave Steppy all she will ever need. There’s no trouble about that, but it seems, I should have told you at the beginning, that Steppy is a little queer, has ideas about buried treasures and all that. Why, I’ve seen her run up to a strange girl and ask her where she got her string of beads! Imagine, when the girl replied icily: ‘In the ten cent store, but they’re all gone.’”

Both laughed. Gloria wondered what the woman might ask her if she ever saw the smoky beads she secretly possessed.

“Well, you see,” continued Jack, her cheeks now glowing with suppressed agitation, “Steppy insists dad had a buried treasure. It’s too long and too foolish to go into, but I must explain that’s why she comes down here and insists I go off with her, every now and again when she unearths what she thinks is a clue. Isn’t that really childish?”

“But she may have an intelligent reason for her belief,” said Gloria, always eager to assist the suspected.

“That’s it. Even our lawyer, (he’s a fine young fellow, a friend of Miss Alton’s,) even he has been deceived. She is so convincing. But now I guess we have dug the last hole. Our mountain place is as dug up as a ground mole farm. That was what played me out. We had to go by the mountain trail, and so of course, we rode.”

“I see,” said Gloria, recalling Trixy’s story of having come upon the little rough rider troupe.

“Yes, I was determined to get back here today. It’s a secret, Glo, but I do want to come out at least pretty good in the English contest. That’s one branch I’m not stupid in and I have the darlingest lady aunty in Manchester, N.H. I want to show her that Broncho Billy, Jacky Corday has one civilized streak in her variegated make-up.”

“Oh, I’m interested in the contest too,” said Gloria, impulsively. “You see, I’ve got a dad. He’s a darling man and quite a scientist, although he is in business. He often has articles on nature studies published in the magazines. And I’m just crazy to show him what I can do. He’s in the Philippines now, that’s why I’m here.”

“Oh, to have a dad! Mine was—a wonderful man.” Gray eyes blinked and the soft voice fell to a cadence.

“Well, at any rate,” chirped Gloria, endeavoring to bring the tempo up to normal, “I’ll race you in the essay, Jack. How much have you finished?”

Followed a brief discussion of the contest, which was being conducted by the Forestry Association for pupils of private schools.

“It will close, you know, in two days more,” said Jack warningly. “Do you suppose these old ladies around here will let me work tomorrow?”

“That might depend upon how well you rest to-night. I think I had better——”

“Oh, I haven’t really told you what I especially wanted you for.” Jack sat up straight and assumed the most confidential air. “I want you to phone Steppy. Tell her you are my chum, and that you have just been talking to me, and I’m perfectly all right. Oh, you know the bunk,” (Jack was so like a boy at times,) “simply fix it so she won’t cut down here and—and shock the gentle Jean.”

“Pity about Jean. If I might advise, Jack, I’d just let Jean and her crowd—whistle!”

“If she only could! But can you see what a noise her lips would make? Whistle! It would be a sizzle. Jean’s mouth is too sour to emit anything really jolly. But anyhow, Glo, I do hope you can forestall Steppy. Really, I couldn’t hardly cope with her myself—just now.”

“All right. I’ll do my best,” said Gloria taking the proffered phone number.

“I knew I could depend upon you, and you won’t mind if I ask you to keep it all to yourself?”

“I wouldn’t think of mentioning it.” Then Gloria remembered Trixy’s frank recital of the morning’s encounter. How could she keep secret from her its sequel? As if Jack divined the thought she said quickly:

“Of course, you may tell Trix. She’s a dear. And there’s Mary, but I wouldn’t care to have her know. Gloria, have you ever seen a girl with such a complete double personality as Mary?”

“I hadn’t noticed. How do you mean?”

“Well, she acts as demure as a kitten, and she’s—oh, I don’t know how to express it, but she seemed like something done up in a case. Her real character doesn’t show until some emergency pops up.”

“Oh, yes. I know she was wonderful today,” said Gloria. “But then, a lot of the girls crawled out of their shells to take part in the circus!”

“Circus?” Did Jack wince or just appear puzzled?

“I mean the wild canoe chase with a real rescued maiden and a poor naked Indian half frozen. Oh, Jack! You missed the time of your life. You should have seen them rubbing me down!”

Jack laughed lightly and any possible “circus clouds” were instantly dispelled.

“Are you sure the old heart is behaving?” asked Gloria, now on her feet and ready to leave.

“Be-u-ti-fully. You see, there is one thing I can do and that’s ride a horse. Wait until you see my Omar. He’s simply a beauty. I won’t say that he didn’t fly over the hills this morning.” A rueful little smile explained the result. “But I don’t think that hurt my heart——” finished Jack.

“No, I don’t either. You know, Jack, you have a weakness for walking the gym ceiling——”

“Well,” a long drawn sigh, “if they’ll just let me scratch with a fountain pen I’ll be satisfied now. I’ve got a wonderful idea in my essay. You see—I’ve travelled a lot.”

“I think I have quite a good idea too,” said Gloria. “I’ve never travelled far, but a day out of doors with my dad goes right into the heart of nature, and I’ve had that experience.”

“Good luck, Glo, I can’t win first, but I want to make a good showing. All the girls are keen on it.”

“Yes.” Gloria had heard nothing but contest for days and she also knew the interest prevalent. “I’ll phone right away, or is this a good time?”

“Yes, I begged Miss Taylor not to write to Steppy till after supper so you will head her off. It will cost a couple of dollars to phone but don’t forget I’m rich, horribly, disgustingly rich, I believe.” After a pause Jack said, “and just reverse the charge, Steppy will love to pay it. Dad was always just as simple as—as any of his men, and I guess I can have a good time without putting on airs, myself.” This was distinctly Jack, the pout, the quirked smile and the final smack of her rather boyish lips. “But do try, honey, to keep Steppy away. When I’m well I can restrain her, but caged up here, I can just imagine the girls waylaying her and she would be sure to give them the family history unabridged.”

“I’ll do my best,” promised Gloria, getting out just in time to let Miss Taylor enter.

The office phone was not safe enough to use for the private message, so with Trixy and an evening walk as an excuse, Gloria started off for the village to telephone Mrs. Philip Corday concerning the condition of her stepdaughter, Jacquinot.

But Gloria had no conception of the enormity of the task assigned her.

Mrs. Corday was, by no means, an ordinary woman.

CHAPTER XI
A NEW ANGLE

There was no time to repeat to Trixy the story Jack had told Gloria, but the “high spots” could not be suppressed even temporarily so Gloria repeatedly told those on her way to the village.

“And that explains the riders’ mystery,” she commented. “You see this treasure business is supposed to be hidden in some wild mountain place.”

“It is so like the usual silly yarn, with the prospect of some similar spectacular and impossible ending,” replied Trixy, “that really, Glo, I could hardly work up interest in it. Can you?”

“Of course not,” agreed Gloria promptly, “I’m not interested in the treasure hunt, but in Jack’s predicament. She’s a real little brick, Trixy. You should hear her stand up for this queer installment plan mother. I hope the ogress won’t eat me up over the wire.”

“Doesn’t the treasure hunt sound a little like the Pirate’s Daughter?” Trixy said, quizzically.

“Oh, I thought of that, and made more than one leading remark in its direction,” admitted Gloria, “but I couldn’t catch even a glimmer of suspicion. Not that I would disturb Jack about it now, but I can’t help wanting to know who bestowed the black necklace upon me. I almost took the token in to our village jeweler for his opinion yesterday. But that must all wait now. Don’t you really feel sorry for proud, high-strung Jack, Trix? I think I would feel exactly like her if I had to hide the weakness of some one I loved. I couldn’t let others see it to scoff.” The black eyes threw out threatening gleams and vouched promptly for the girl’s loyalty to a friend in need.

“Yes, it is hard for Jack to manage that sort of person. I would rather do most anything than try to cover up relatives’ shortcomings. They always crop out and spoil everything at the critical time,” said Trixy.

“Yes.” Gloria paused reflectively. Her father was a gentleman, always, Aunt Harriet, Hazel’s mother was old fashioned but naturally polite, even Jane, though no relative and really only a nurse, was instinctively considerate. “Yes, it must be humiliating for a girl to have to fight vulgarity,” Gloria concluded.

“And you know, Trix,” she continued, “Jack just jokes about her money. Says it is all done up in little prize packages so that she can use a week’s or month’s supply without counting it. Isn’t that like Jack?”

“Exactly. But here we are. I’ll wait for you at the soda counter. I want the joy of a soda undisturbed. I may have another with you while you swallow your favorite lime.”

“Oh, there’s Blanche, and Edna,” Gloria grumbled, catching sight of a group of girls within the store.

“And worse yet, there’s Jean. However did they all get out here so early?”

“Working hard on the essay, I suppose, so they came in early in order to have a long evening. Are you going in for it, Trix?”

“No, I’m too old and grown-up for prize essays,” laughed Trix. “But I hope you’ll win out. Of course you know that, Lambikins.”

“I want to, for dad’s sake,” replied Gloria evenly, “and I really do love the subject. It’s no trouble at all to write it.”

“I imagine you would love it. Now slip into the phone while I flag the others. Don’t get excited and don’t make any rash promises.”

Ten minutes later Gloria emerged from the booth, her cheeks aflame and her eyes shining.

“Whew!” she whispered to Trixy. “That was some message. I’m not sure I succeeded in allaying Mrs. Corday’s fears for Jack. Somehow she already had the news.”

“Want a soda? You look puffed out,” commented Trixy, beckoning the clerk. “Take your time, Glo, the others have all gone. Just as you suspected, they are in for the prize. It seems Jean’s mother is a Daughter of the Wars, and the Daughters, it also seems, are interested in the success of the contest. And harken! If you win the prize you may have cash or the especially struck off medal. You should have heard what the girls are going to buy for the cash consideration,” Trixy enjoyed the joke.

“I suppose so,” Gloria was fanning with the soda list and still panting. Presently she said, “Trixy, there is something queer about Jack’s Steppy. I don’t wonder Jack wants to keep her away from carping critics. She got so excited I thought she would short circuit the system.”

Trixy laughed. “Then you are not sure you have forestalled her coming?”

“No, I’m not.”

“It wouldn’t do Jack any good to worry about her just now. The doctor told Miss Taylor that Jack was suffering from what is termed an athletic heart, and she must be kept quiet. He really insinuated her condition could easily become critical.”

Gloria sipped her soda thoughtfully. She was still flushed and uncomfortable.

“But if she insists upon coming? There is no doubt of it she thinks the world of our Jack, and who can blame her for wanting a glimpse of the girl? What a shame she had to get the worst end of the news.”

“Cheer up! Here’s a letter, if you are calm enough to read it. Go right ahead, I have one I’ll re-read. It’s from dad. Yours has a favorite post mark, I noticed,” said Trixy.

“From Jane. Dear old Jane!” exclaimed Gloria. “I’d just love to see her. Have I time to read this? I’ll just glance through it——”

“Do.” The business letter head was again drawn from the business envelope and Trixy smiled over every word as she re-read.

Gloria’s face lit up like a blaze.

“Oh, she’s coming! Jane is coming down to see me! Isn’t that delicious! Janie, the calico lady! The only woman on earth who can wear a tight bonnet, strings under her chin and look pretty! She does. Trixy, I can just see her landing in Altmount. I hope she comes at recreation so every one sees her——”

Gloria was fairly dancing. Trixy had paid the check and they were ready to leave. The prim young lady clerk was smiling broadly.

“No danger of you wanting to hide your near-mother,” remarked Trixy. “Perhaps Jack is too sensitive. Why should she so fear to have the girls see the woman?”

This was said as they struck the homeward stride. “Well, you see, Trix,” replied Gloria, “she has some little kink in her mentality, and Jack says she knows she would blurt out the family history, unabridged, first thing.”

“Oh,” an emphatic pause drew out the single syllable until it included a quizzical sentence.

“You see, with Jack’s money,” Gloria quickly defended. But that didn’t explain the fear of publishing the family history. “Really,” she began again lamely, “you would think her fortune was a joke. The way she speaks of it. I wouldn’t wonder but she’ll do some huge thing just to show the girls how mistaken they have been. But that isn’t half as interesting as the coming of Jane!” Trixy’s arm stood the battery of a powerful love squeeze just then.

“How is she coming?”

“Didn’t say, but I hope by auto. I wouldn’t know when to meet her. And let’s hurry, Trix. I’ll have to work until all hours to have a little time off tomorrow.” They both quickened the already lively pace. “And of course,” Gloria rattled on, “I’ll have to tell Jack——Dear me! What shall I tell her?”

“The best yarn you can fix up. Remember that sick people sometimes need poison in medicine and—shall I say good healthy falsehoods are the same sort of mental antidote?”

“I see. Of course, I’ll try to make her mind easy. But you know, Trix, I couldn’t get the woman to say she would wait to hear when Jack might have a free day. She talked so much, so fast, so loud! My ears still tingle.”

“Just tell Jack you fixed it all right——”

“And then set Sam to watch the trains! Trix, if she ever comes what will happen to my essay? I have to retype it tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry, lamb, perhaps she won’t come. I’d offer to watch for her and corral her, if necessary, but I have a test, in physics at that, and I’ve been plugging for nights on the stuff, but somehow I don’t get the big idea.”

“How about Mary? Suppose we could make her understand? Oh, but that wouldn’t do either,” Gloria hastened to correct. “I promised Jack to tell no one but you. She mentioned Mary’s name but did not include her.”

They were climbing the second hill in Altmount grounds, and the evening was in quite a hurry to finish up its duties, for already shadows were plunging into Night’s canopy.

“I hope poor Jack is asleep,” remarked Gloria. She showed real agitation now, as her task became more complicated.

“She may be asleep, for medicines often have that sort of secondary action. Glo, love, I’m glad I’m here now. It has been rather stupid after the wildly lovely times we had together out in the reckless world,” she explained more fully, with a charming but most unworldly manner characteristic of the real unspoiled girl, “and now,” she continued, “you the little old reliable you that has bewitched me, have precipitated the most alluring episode of all, including pirate’s daughter, hiding gem laden trunks, losing guilty blood stones and surreptitiously rewarding the poor but honest finder with a black jade necklace. Naturally, we’re afraid the necklace is hoodooed, but I’m going to borrow it some day and find out.”

“Glad I was able to inject a little variety into the solitude,” murmured Gloria, “but as far as I am personally concerned, I’d like to thin it out right now. I didn’t count on irate stepmothers shocking snobby school girls into fear of social contamination. There! see how my English has improved?”

“Marvelously! You’ll surely win that prize——”

“And Jack is trying——”

“I know. I’ve been helping her a little——”

“Oh.”

“You don’t mind, Glo? I wouldn’t help her against you. But she’s pitifully weak on spelling, for instance. It’s a strange thing that she should be so low in grade if she has always been—in such affluent circumstances.”

“Yes. I don’t think it’s gossipy to remark on her lack of many things that usually come with money,” said Gloria wisely. “All of which would point to sudden wealth.”

“Or, perhaps, to some circumstance not compatible with wealth. Sometimes a big mill manager may really be rich and yet have to live in a horrible district,” reasoned Trixy. Her own father was a manufacturer and a magnate, but their home in Sandford was the show place of the town. Yet Beatrix Travers was well versed in such limitations.

“I don’t believe it is that,” said Gloria. “It appears to me——”

“Oh, naturally it must fit in with all the other thrilling details.” They were in the hallway, but no one seemed to be about. “Just as we thought they are—plugging,” smiled Trixy. “I’ll make a sign for our door while I wait for you. They might just come down on us for curiosity’s sake.”

Gloria tossed back a smile as she took the other corridor. In spite of her confidence with Trixy there was always a subtle something she could not find words to express. She knew, instinctively, that Jack had hidden more than she had divulged, she also knew that the sensitiveness could not account for such alarm as Jack had betrayed, therefore there was something definite Jack was bound to hide from her companions.

This line of reasoning was suddenly interrupted by Mary Mears almost colliding with Gloria on the turn near Jack’s door.

“Oh!” both exclaimed.

“She’s asleep,” said Mary. “Did you get her mother on the wire?”

“Yes,” murmured Gloria surprised that Mary should ask.

“Is she—satisfied to wait—until Jack is stronger?”

“I think so——”

“She was—excited?”

“Mary,” whispered Gloria, drawing the girl into a nearby alcove. “Did Jack—tell you?”

“Yes and no,” said Mary frankly. “But Gloria, I know something of Jack’s anxiety and you need not fear you are divulging confidence. In fact, it is really more important for me to know if Mrs. Corday is coming here than it is for Jack.”

“For you to know?” repeated Gloria, incredulously.

“Yes,” said Mary decisively. “And if you know whether or not she is coming, Gloria, can’t you trust me far enough to let me know?” The voice and manner were subtly ingratiating.

“Certainly, Mary,” promised Gloria, and the next moment she was in her own room holding her confused head in two unwilling hands.

“The waters gather,” she groaned to Trixy.

“They rush along,” finished the girl under the yellow lamp shade.

CHAPTER XII
A TRIBUTE

“But what could Mary mean?”

This question, or at least some variation of it had been Gloria’s plaint for the better part of a half hour, and Trixy, still patient, offered another suggestion in answer.

“There is something strange about Mary,” she said this time. “I thought I noticed it first when she caught a glimpse of a family picture in Jack’s room. It might have been imagination, we were all under such a strain, but it seemed to me her pale face betrayed sudden alarm.”

“A picture!”

“Yes. Just a rustic snapshot taken somewhere in the mountains. The stepmother, father and a couple of queer looking folks. I didn’t scrutinize it but Mary took it to the light when she thought or appeared to think no one noticed. She had some motive for studying the picture.”

“Did she say anything about it?”

“Asked me if I knew who were in the group. Jack was dozing and Miss Taylor hovered near.”

“I thought I had a first rate mystery in the Pirate’s Daughter, with her blood stone and the gift of black pearls, but now here comes Mary moping along, with regular melodrama. Trixy, the plot—thick-ens! Am I or am I not the gurrull from Barbend?” Gloria rolled down on the floor and kept rolling until the legs of the table stopped her. Then she lay flat, arms out straight and eyes closed. Trixy dropped a chocolate drop so near the receptive mouth it eventually rolled in.

“Oh, lovely-kins!” said the girl on the floor. “Why did I ever promise Dame Ambition that I’d try for that old prize? I feel like sleeping until the crack of doom.”

“No wonder. You have had what might be honestly called, a full day. Get up on the couch and take forty winks. I’ll shake you in time to finish that important page.”

“Hark! I hear a footstep——”

“Quick! Up on the couch and I won’t let them disturb you.”

Roughly tucked in with the brilliant Navajo blanket, Gloria squeezed her eyes closed before the door was opened to admit Pat.

“Is she asleep?” asked the red haired one, considerately.

“I hope so,” whispered Trixy. “What a day she has had! Won’t you come in, Pat?”

“Not if I would disturb her.” A few carefully chosen steps brought Pat within reach of a chair. “They asked me to bring her this. Every one chipped in.”

Gloria sat up straight. Her eyes beheld a glorious box that could contain nothing less sweet than candy.

“Oh!” she gurgled.

“Awake?” Pat’s voice betrayed her hopes.

“I really wasn’t asleep, but who-all sent me this? And why?”

“Why? Say, Glo, Mary tried to pawn her best ring to Janet for her share in the chipping. Mary always does use up her allowance in advance, but she was heartbroken not to have any real cash on hand. I mention it to show the spirit. Glo, we’ll never one of us have a chance after this.” Pat dug her sport shoes into the rug. “And to think I didn’t even have sense enough to dip in, get wet and pretend I was for the rescue! Well, anyways, as Tillie, the milk girl says, there’s the token of our esteem, and we all hope it won’t make you sick. Maud Hunter selected it and she is supposed to know what’s what in candy, because her dad gambles in sugar or eggs or something sweetish.”

Pat had ostentatiously placed the beautiful box in Gloria’s outstretched hands and was salaaming absurdly.

Trixy beamed. “It was lovely of the girls——”

“And that little Ethel proposed it, she was so tickled to have helped rub your toes, Glo, or did she hold the soap? Anyways, she’s so grateful to have had a hand in adjusting your precious person. And say, girls, how’s Jack?”

“Sleeping, last we heard, and doing all right, we hope,” replied Trixy. Gloria was fondling the gift appreciatively.

“She’s a lucky stude. I thought it was all over, and I’ll never forget her face. Honest.” The tone was not now frivolous. “But say, Gloriosa, how goes the essay? I hear you’re out to win?”

Even with the opportunity of banter made by Pat herself, Gloria couldn’t find words to say “Run along! I’ve got to work to-night,” instead she faltered:

“I’m afraid I’ve got an awful lot to do yet. And tomorrow may be a broken day.”

“The girls working in the contest are to have a free day for it, didn’t you know?”

“Yes, I knew that, but I expect company,” said Gloria, still admiring the handsome candy box.

“Oh! May I meet him?”

“You may meet her. It’s my near-mother, Jane Morgan. She has been with me all my life until last year and this,” said Gloria gently. “And I’m willing to divulge this real secret, right here and now. Listen! I hope I shall be with her again before many more years, for my idea of a real life, is the thatched roof, with Jane and dad in the foreground and an ocean for a hedge.”

“Lov-ell-lee!” thrilled Pat. “And, Glo, I don’t expect you to open up the candy, so don’t worry about an excuse. I’ll toddle along. What report shall I make to the committee?”

“Oh, they’re dears, every one of them, and you can tell them I said so. I wish I wasn’t so busy. I’d invite them all in and we’d celebrate. But after all, perhaps it will be better to wait until we can fix something up for Jack. I’ll save the prettiest pieces——”

“Hark! There’s some one coming to make sure I brought it to you and didn’t break the seal. Give me one little kiss in that clean spot below the freckle patch. Thanks, Glo dear, and if I live to be a hundred I’ll never forget this day.”

So little Pat bounced out in time to prevent the invasion of the approaching stepper.

“Even Jean,” murmured Trixy, referring to the list of donors.

“But I couldn’t trust her, for all of that,” returned Gloria, frankly. “I think Jean respects popular opinion, and just now it seems to blow my way. But I wouldn’t care to depend upon it for a night’s lodging.”

“Cynic,” scolded Trixy. “You know, Glo, it’s positively rash to fly in the face of popularity. But at any rate, sit down and write. You have a good hour left, and mayhap the diversion hath refreshed thee. Get thee to thy task, and may Minerva be kind.”

From that time until the bell rang Trixy stalled off five attempts at intrusion, by actual count. It seemed that even an essay contest, keen though it was, would not hold down the curious ones.

Gloria soon forgot her own fatigue, however, in her interest of the subject, and what between hunting up words, verifying vague beliefs in the great out doors, identifying queer little birds with downy whiskers over their eyes, (she had found one by the big oak tree, the queerest bird, that might have been a horned lark, but it was so young the marks could hardly be accepted as permanent,) these necessary interruptions rather delayed the actual progress of the last draft of the essay. But Gloria worked on, unconscious of draw-backs, enjoying the one task that befell her—original writing on the one original subject: Nature in The Great Outdoors.

“How come?” inquired Trixy, her own lamp already dimmed.

“Oh, I love it!” breathed Gloria. “The one trouble is, the theme is so unlimited, unrestricted. I believe one could write two thousand words on the life of a fern, it is all real, vivid and fascinating.”

“Because you know all about ferns, and hop toads and daddy-long-legs,” said Trixy. “Now, I would find it simpler to expand on the joy of home comforts. That’s one thing first rate at Altmount. The beds are swell!”

“And I’ll join you in similar praise directly,” promised Gloria. “Meanwhile I’ll drop the curtain. There’s no need of keeping you awake on my work.”

“Well, you know I’d stay awake if it would do you any good, Glo. But like saying your prayers, essay writing, according to the rules, must be individually executed. What I did for Jack was just the roughest suggestion, of course.”

“Poor Jack! I wonder if they’ll let her finish it tomorrow?”

“Likely, if she rests well. Physical exertion is the main restriction.”

Gloria was pondering, deeply, trying to fix up a difficult paragraph. Trixy heard her sigh and suggested:

“Sleep over it, Glo. If you go to sleep with the snarl on your mind, you will wake up with it all straightened out. Really. Psychologists say so. Be careful where you hide your candy. I might walk in my sleep.”

“I wish the girls hadn’t done it.”

“Why?”

“Oh, sort of makes me feel foolish.”

“Silly. You ought to be tickled to death. That’s the loveliest box they had at Benwick’s. And besides, I’m sure they wanted to show you how they felt.”

“You mean that the country stigma has been condoned?” There was an even tone of mockery in this.

“Gloria Doane, you ought to be slapped.” Trixy sat up straight to say this and Gloria was sitting on the foot of her chum’s bed to rest up a little before trying to sleep. “You know perfectly well no one ever considered you—country.”

“Queer what a morbid imagination I have. But never mind, lamb. ’S’all right. I know you love me and—and I hope I can send a good report to dad. What else counts? And Jane comes on the morrow! Whew! I’d best be haymaking, or whatever it is Pat calls getting to sleep. Trixy, don’t you love little Pat?”

“’Course.”

“And isn’t Mary quaint?”

“’Squaint?”

“Oh, go to sleep, dear, and don’t let my alarm disturb you. I’m putting it under the big bowl right at my ear. Set for——”

But the monotonous breathing from the alcove made further explanation unnecessary.

In her own bed Gloria found sleep or did not find it within reach. Hours, it seemed, she lay there, thinking. She changed line and paragraph of the essay over and over again, even snapping on her light to note some subtle phrase that might escape her memory during sleep, if sleep ever came.

Finally, anxious for rest, she deliberately turned her thoughts to Jack.

Why was she so fearful her stepmother would divulge family matters? What was so secret about it all?

“And she doesn’t seem to know anything about the black pearls, or whatever the anonymous necklace is made of,” she decided. That strain of thought travelled far before the weary girl checked it. Then the new angle, Mary’s strange remark, came up for investigation.

“Could she have some secret interest in Jack?” Gloria questioned. “I always fancied she hovered over her, somehow, especially since that day in the dressing room when the girls openly discussed the loud spoken Steppy, who had taken Jack away so suddenly.”

For some time vague fancies formed as explaining this sudden interest of Mary’s. She remembered how outspoken Mary had been in Jack’s defense. How she had asked more than one girl if she had seen the Steppy. But no one had.

“And when Trixy came in from the ride,” persisted Gloria’s abused brain, “she thought she saw someone, who might be Mary, hiding back of the hedge, just as Jack and the other Rough Riders dashed in?”

“Now why——”

But a welcome confusion checked the answer and mercifully put Gloria’s faith in the exact science of a well trained little alarm clock.

For a heavy day following was imminent.

CHAPTER XIII
SERIOUS SCHOOL WORK

But the alarm clock did not wake Gloria. There had been voices during the night, subdued yet distinctive enough to penetrate her consciousness, and now, although it was still dark, a slight commotion in the corridor startled Trixy as well as Gloria, and both were intently listening.

“What was it?”

“I think Jack must be worse. I heard a man’s voice.”

“Dear me. I hope not. Listen!”

“Yes, that’s the doctor’s voice. Oh Trix! If she should be worse!” Gloria’s voice trembled with alarm.