Ruth Fielding At College: or, The Missing Examination Papers

Jennie began to laugh. "Wonder if the seniors are just helping out their friends among the tradespeople? It looks as though the storekeepers had bought a superabundance of baby blue caps and the seniors were putting it up to us to save the stores from bankruptcy."

Ruth, however, thought it must be something other than that. Was it that the storekeepers had been notified by the senior "powers that be" to be ready to supply a sudden large demand for tam-o'-shanters of that particular hue?

At least, one little Hebrew asked the three friends if they had already bought their tam-o'-shanters. "For vy, I haf a whole case of your class colors, ladies, that my poy iss opening."

"What class color?" demanded Helen, grumpily enough.

"Oh, Mees! A peau-ti-ful plue!"

"They're all doing it! They're all doing it!" murmured Jennie, staggering out of the "emporium." "This is going to affect my brain, girls. Did the seniors know the storekeepers had the tams in stock, or have the storekeepers been put wise by our elder sisters at Ardmore?"

"What's the odds?" finally laughed Helen, as they got into the waiting car. "We've got our tams. I only hope there are enough to go around."

The appearance of more than a score of baby-blue caps on the campus before evening showed that our trio of freshmen were not the only members of their class who considered it wise to obey the mandate of the lordly seniors, and without question.

The tempest in the teapot, however, continued to rage. Many girls declared they had not come to Ardmore to "be made monkeys of."

"No," May MacGreggor was heard to say. "Some of you were already assisted by nature. But get together, freshies! Can't you read the handwriting on the wall?"

"We can read the typewriting on the billboards," sniffed Helen Cameron. "Don't ask us to strain our eyesight farther."

Perhaps this was really the intention behind the senior order – that the entering girls should become more quickly riveted into a compact body. How the rooms occupied by the more popular freshmen buzzed during the next few days!

Our trio of friends, Ruth, Helen and Jennie, had been in danger of establishing a clique of three, if they had but known it. Now they were forced to extend their borders of acquaintanceship.

As they were three, and were usually seen about the study-room Ruth and Helen had established, it was natural that other girls of their class on that corridor of Dale Hall should flock to them. They thus became the nucleus at this side of the campus of the freshman class. From discussing the rule of the haughty seniors, the freshmen began to talk of their own organization and the approaching election.

Had Ruth allowed her friends to do so, there would have been started a boom by Helen and Jennie Stone for the girl of the Red Mill for president of the freshman class. This honor Ruth did not desire. There were several girls whom she had noted already among her mates, older than she, and who evidently possessed qualities for the position.

Besides, Ruth Fielding felt that if she became unduly prominent at first at Ardmore, girls like Edith Phelps would consider her a particularly bright target. She told herself again, but this time in private, that fame was not always an asset.

CHAPTER XI

THE ONE REBEL

However much the natural independence of the freshmen balked at the mandate promulgated by the seniors, baby-blue tam-o'-shanters grew more numerous every hour on the Ardmore campus.

The sophomores were evidently filled with glee; the juniors and seniors smiled significantly, but said nothing. The freshmen had been put in their place at once, it was considered. But the attack upon them had made the newcomers eager for an organization of their own.

"If we are going to be bossed this way – and it is disgraceful! – we must be prepared to withstand imposition," Helen announced.

So they began busily settling the matter of the organization of the class and the choosing of its officers. Before these matters were arranged completely, however, there was an incident of note.

The freshmen, as a body, were invited to attend a sophomore "roar." It was to be the first out-of-door "roar" of the year and occurred right after classes and lectures one afternoon. The two lower classes scamped their gymnasium work to make it a success.

Now, a "roar" at Ardmore was much nicer than it sounds. It was merely an open-air singing festival, and this one was for the purpose of making the freshmen familiar with the popular songs of the college.

Professor Leidenburg, the musical director, himself led the outdoor concert. The sophomores stood in a compact body before the main entrance to the college hall. Massed in the background, and in a half circle, were the freshmen.

The weather had become cool and all the girls wore their tam-o'-shanters. For the first time it was noticeable how pretty the pale blue caps on the freshmen's heads looked. And the new girls likewise noted that most of the tam-o'-shanters worn-by their sophomore hostesses were pale yellow.

It was whispered then (and strange none of the freshmen had discovered it before) that the class preceding theirs at Ardmore – the present sophomores – had been forced to wear caps of a distinctive color, too. These pale yellow ones were their old caps, left over from the previous winter.

The open-air assemblages of the college were made more attractive by this scheme of a particular class color in head-wear.

There was a blot in the assembly of the freshmen on this occasion. It was not discovered in the beginning. Soon, however, there was much whispering, and looking about and pointing.

"Do you see that?" gasped Jennie, who had been straining her neck and hopping up and down on her toes to see what the other girls were looking at.

"What are you rubbering at, Heavy?" demanded Helen, inelegantly.

"Yes; what's all the disturbance?" asked Ruth.

"That girl!" ejaculated the fleshy one.

"What girl now? Any particular girl?"

"She's not very particular, I guess," returned Jennie, "or she wouldn't do it."

"Jennie!" demanded Helen. "Who do what?"

"That Frayne girl," explained her plump friend.

Rebecca Frayne stood well back in the lines of freshmen. It could not be said that she thrust herself forward, or sought to gain the attention of the crowd. Nevertheless, among the mass of pale blue tam-o'-shanters, her parti-colored one was very prominent.

"Goodness!" gasped Ruth. "Doesn't she know better?"

"Do you suppose she is one of those stubborn girls who just 'won't be driv'?" giggled Helen.

It was no laughing matter. The three days of grace written upon the seniors' order regarding the caps had now passed. There seemed no good reason for one member of the freshman class to refuse to obey the command. Indeed, they had all tacitly agreed to do as they were told – upon this single point, at least.

"There certainly are enough of them left in town so that she can buy one," Jennie Stone said.

"Goodness!" snapped Helen. "If my complexion can stand such a silly color, hers certainly can."

Before the out-of-doors concert was over, news of this rebellion on the part of a single freshman had run through the crowd like a breath of wind over ripe wheat. It almost broke up the "roar."

As the last verse of the last song was ended and the company began to disperse, the freshmen themselves, and the sophomores as well, stared at Rebecca Frayne in open wonder. She started for her room, which was in Dare Hall on the same corridor as that of the three girls from Briarwood, and Ruth and Helen and Jennie were right behind her.

"That certainly is an awful tam," groaned Jennie. "What do you suppose makes her wear it, anyway? Let alone the trouble – "

She broke off. Miss Dexter, the first senior who had spoken to Ruth and Helen coming over from the railway station on the auto-bus, stopped the strange girl whose initials were the same as those of the girl of the Red Mill.

"Will you tell me, please, why you are wearing that tam-o'-shanter?" asked Miss Dexter.

Rebecca Frayne's head came up and a spot of vivid red appeared in either of her sallow cheeks.

"Is that your business?" she demanded, slowly.

"Do you know that I am a senior?" asked Miss Dexter, levelly.

"I don't care if you are two seniors," returned Rebecca Frayne, saucily.

Miss Dexter turned her back upon the freshman and walked promptly away. The listeners were appalled. None of them cared to go forward and speak to Rebecca Frayne.

"Cracky!" gasped Helen. "She's an awful spitfire."

"She's an awful chump!" groaned Jennie. "The seniors won't do a thing to her!"

But nothing came at once of Rebecca's refusal to obey the seniors' command regarding tam-o'-shanters. It was known, however, that the executive committees of both the senior and junior classes met that next night and supposedly took the matter up.

"Oh, no! They don't haze any more at Ardmore," said Jennie, shaking her head. "But just wait!"

CHAPTER XII

RUTH IS NOT SATISFIED

Ruth Fielding was not at all satisfied. Not that her experiences in these first few weeks of college were not wholly "up to sample," as the slangy Jennie Stone remarked. Ruth was getting personally all out of college life that she could expect.

The mere fact that a little handful of the girls looked at her somewhat askance because of her success as a motion picture writer, did not greatly trouble the girl of the Red Mill. She could wait for them to forget her small "fame" or for them to learn that she was quite as simple and unaffected as any other girl of her age. It was about Rebecca Frayne that Ruth was disturbed in her mind. Here was the case of a student who, Ruth believed, was much misunderstood.

She could not imagine a girl deliberately making trouble for herself. Rebecca Frayne by the expenditure of a couple of dollars in the purchase of a new tam-o'-shanter might have easily overcome this dislike that had been bred not alone in the minds of the girls of the two upper classes, but among the sophomores and her own classmates as well. The sophomores thought her ridiculous; the freshmen themselves felt that she was bringing upon the whole class unmerited criticism.

Ruth looked deeper. She saw the strange girl walk past her mates unnoticed, scarcely spoken to, indeed, by the freshmen and ignored completely by members of the other classes. And yet, to Ruth's mind, there seemed to be an air about Rebecca Frayne – a look in her eyes, perhaps – that seemed to beg for sympathy.

It was no hardship for Ruth to speak to the girl and try to be friendly with her. But opportunities for this were not frequent.

In the first place Ruth's own time was much occupied with her studies, her own personal friends, Helen and Jennie, and the new scenario on which she worked during every odd hour.

Several times Ruth went to the door of Rebecca's room and knocked. She positively knew the girl was at home, but there had been no answer to her summons and the door was locked.

The situation troubled Ruth. When she was among her classmates, Rebecca seemed nervously anxious to please and eager to be spoken to, although she had little to say. Here, on the other hand, once alone in her room, she deliberately shut herself away from all society.

Soon after the outdoor song festival that had been so successful, and immediately following the organization of the freshman class and its election of officers, Ruth and Helen went over to the library one evening to consult some reference books.

The reference room was well filled with busy girls of all classes, who came bustling in, got down the books they required, dipped into them for a minute and then departed to their own studies, or else settled down to work on their topics for a more extended period.

It was a cold evening, and whenever a girl entered from the hall a breath of frosty air came with her, and most of those gathered in the room were likely to look up and shiver. Few of those assembled failed to notice Rebecca Frayne when she came in.

"Goodness! See who has came," whispered Helen.

"Oh, Rebecca!" murmured Ruth, looking up as the girl in question crossed the room.

"Hasn't she the cheek of all cheeks to breeze in here this way?" Helen went on to say with more force than elegance. "That awful tam again."

One could not fail to see the tam-o'-shanter very well. It was noticeable in any assembly.

Perhaps half of the girls in the reference room were seniors and juniors. Several of the members of the younger classes nodded to the newcomer, though not many noticed her in this way.

There was, however, almost immediately a general movement by the girls belonging to the senior and junior classes. They got up grimly, put away the books they were at work upon, and filed out, one by one, and without saying a word.

Helen stared after them, and nudged Ruth.

"What is it?" asked her chum, who had been too busy to notice.

"Did you see that?" asked Helen.

"Did I see what?"

"There isn't a senior or a jun left in the room. That – that's something more than a coincidence."

Ruth was puzzled. "I really wish you would explain," she said.

Helen was not the only girl remaining who had noticed the immediate departure of the members of the two older classes. Some of the sophomores were whispering together. Rebecca's fellow-classmen glanced at her sharply to see if she had noticed what had occurred.

"I can't believe it," Ruth said worriedly, after Helen explained. "They would not go out because she came in."

The next day, however, the matter was more marked. Rebecca could sing; she evidently loved singing. In the classes for vocal music there was often a mixture of all grades, some of the seniors and juniors attending with the sophomores and freshmen.

Ruth Fielding, of course, never missed these classes. She hoped to be noticed and have her voice tried out for the Glee Club. Professor Leidenburg was to give a little talk on this day that would be helpful, and the class was well attended.

But when Rebecca Frayne came into the small hall just before the professor himself appeared, there was a stir throughout the audience. The girls, of course, were hatless here; but that morning Rebecca had been seen wearing the "scrambled-egg tam," as Helen insisted upon calling it.

There was an intake of breath all over the room. Rebecca walked down the aisle in search of an empty seat.

And suddenly half the seats were empty. She could have her choice – and a large one.

"Goodness!" Helen gasped.

Every senior and junior in the room had arisen and had left her seat. Not a word had been spoken, nor had they glanced at Rebecca Frayne, who at first was unaware of what it portended.

The older girls filed out silently. Professor Leidenburg entered by the door beside the organ just in time to see the last of them disappear. He looked a bit surprised, but said nothing and took up the matter at hand with but half an audience.

Rebecca Frayne had seen and understood at last. She sat still in her seat, and Ruth saw that she did not open her lips when, later, the choruses were sung. Her face was very pale.

Nobody spoke to her when the class was dismissed. This was not an intentional slight on the part of her mates; simply, the girls did not know what to say.

The seniors and juniors were showing Rebecca that she was taboo. Their attitude could not be mistaken. And so great was the influence of these older girls of Ardmore upon the whole college that Rebecca walked entirely alone.

Ruth and Helen walked down the hill behind Rebecca that afternoon. Ruth was very silent, while Helen buzzed about a dozen things.

"I – I wonder how that poor girl feels?" murmured the girl of the Red Mill after a while.

"Cold, I imagine!" declared her chum, vigorously. "I'm half frozen myself, Ruth. There's going to be a big frost to-night and the lake is already skimmed over. Say, Ruth!"

"Well?" asked her friend, absently.

"Let's take our skates first thing in the morning down to that man who sharpens things at the boathouse; will you?"

CHAPTER XIII

THE GIRL IN THE STORM

Ruth Fielding was quite as eager for fun between lessons as either Helen or Jennie, and the prospect of skating on such a large lake as Remona delighted her. The second day following the incident in the chorus class, the ice which had bound Lake Remona was officially pronounced safe.

Gymnasium athletics lost their charm for those girls who were truly active and could skate. There were luxurious damsels who preferred to be pushed about in ice-chairs by more active girls or by hired attendants; but our trio of friends did not look upon that as enjoyment.

Even Jennie Stone was a vigorous skater. After a day or two on the ice, when their ankles had become strong enough, the three made a circuit of Bliss Island – and that was "some skate," to quote Jennie.

The island was more than a mile from the boathouse, and it was five or six miles in circumference. Therefore, the task was quite all of an eight-mile jaunt.

"But 'do or die' is our motto," remarked Helen, as they set forth on this determined journey. "Let's show these pussy girls what it means to have trained at Briarwood."

"That's all right! that's all right!" grumbled Jennie. "But your motto is altogether too grim and significant. Let's limit it. I want to do if I can; but mercy me! I don't want to die yet. You girls have got to stop and rest when I say so, or I won't go at all."

Ruth and Helen agreed. That is why it took them until almost dinner-time to encircle the island. Jennie Stone was determined to rest upon the least provocation.

"We'll be starved to death before we get back," Helen began to complain while they were upon the south side of the island. "I should think you would feel the pinch of privation, Heavy."

"I do," admitted the other hollowly.

"Well, why didn't you escape it by refusing to come, or else by bringing a lunch?" demanded the black-eyed girl.

"No. This is a part of the system," groaned Jennie.

"What system, I'd like to know?" Ruth asked, in surprise.

"System of martyrdom, I guess," sniffed Helen.

"You've said it," agreed the plump girl. "That is the truest word yet spoken. Martyrdom! that is what it means for me."

"What means to you?" snapped Helen, exasperated because she could not understand.

"This dieting and exercising," Jennie said more cheerfully. "I deliberately came so far and without food to see if I couldn't really lose some weight. Do you know, girls, I am so hollow and so tired right now, that I believe I must have lost a few ounces, anyway."

"You ridiculous thing!" laughed Helen, recovering her good nature.

"Should we sacrifice ourselves for your benefit, do you think, Jennie?" Ruth asked.

"Why not? 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' only more so. I need the inspiration of you girls to help me," Jennie declared. "Do you know, sometimes I am almost discouraged?"

"About what?" asked Helen.

"About my weight. I watch the bathroom scales with eagle eye. But instead of coming down by pounds, I only fall by ounces. It is awfully discouraging. And then," added the fleshy girl, "the other day when we had such a scrumptuous dinner – was it Columbus Day? I believe so – I was tempted to eat one of my old-time 'full and plenty' meals, and what do you think?"

"You had the nightmare," said Helen.

"Not a chance! But I went up two pounds and a half– or else the scales were crazy!"

"Girls!" exclaimed Ruth, suddenly. "Do you know it is snowing?"

"My! I never expected that," cried Helen, as a feathery flake lit upon the very point of her pretty nose. "Ow!"

"Well, we'd better go on, I guess," Ruth observed. "Put your best foot forward, please, Miss Jennie."

"I don't know which is my best foot now," complained the heavy girl. "They are both getting lame."

"We'll just have to make you sit down on the ice while we drag you," announced Helen, increasing the length of her stroke.

"Not much you won't!" exclaimed Jennie Stone, "I'm cold enough as it is."

"Shall we take off our skates and walk over the island, girls?" suggested Ruth. "That will save some time and more than a little work for Heavy."

"Don't worry about me," put in Jennie. "I need the exercise. And walking would be worse than skating, I do believe."

It was snowing quite thickly now; but the shore of the island was not far away. The trio hugged it closely in encircling the wooded and hilly piece of land.

"Say!" Helen cried, "we're not the only girls out here to-day."

"Huh?" grunted Jennie, head down and skating doggedly.

"See there, Ruth!" called the black-eyed girl.

Ruth turned her face to one side and looked under the shade of her hand, which she held above her eyes. There was a figure moving along the shore of Bliss Island just abreast of them.

"It's a girl," she said. "But she's not skating."

"Who is it? A freshie?" asked Jennie, but little interested.

Ruth did not reply. She seemed wonderfully interested by the appearance of the girl on shore. She fell behind her mates while she watched the figure.

The snow was increasing; and that with the abruptly rising island, furnished a background for the strange girl which threw her into relief.

At first Ruth was attracted only by her figure. She could not see her face.

"Who can she be? Not one of the girls at Dare Hall – "

This idea spun to nothingness very quickly. No! The figure ashore reminded Ruth Fielding of nobody whom she had seen recently. The feeling, however, that she knew the person grew.

The snow blew sharply into the faces of the skating girls; but she on shore was somewhat sheltered from the gale. The wind was out of the north and west and the highland of the island broke the zest of the gale for the strange girl.

"And yet she isn't strange – I know she isn't," murmured Ruth Fielding, casting another glance back at the figure on the shore.

"Come on, Ruth! Do hurry!" cried Helen, looking back. "Even Heavy is beating you."

Ruth quickened her efforts. The strange girl disappeared, mounting a path it seemed toward the center of the island. Ruth, head bent and lips tightly closed, skated on intent upon her mystifying thoughts.

The trio rounded the island at last. They got the wind somewhat at their backs and on a long slant made for the boathouse landing. It was growing dusk, but there was a fire at the landing that beckoned them on.

"Glad it isn't any farther," Helen panted. "This snow is gathering so fast it clogs one's skates."

"Oh, I must be losing pounds!" puffed Jennie Stone. "I bet none of my clothes will fit me to-morrow. I shall have to throw them all away."

"Oh, Heavy!" giggled Helen. "That lovely new silk?"

"Oh – well – I shall take that in!" drawled Jennie.

"I've got it!" exclaimed Ruth, in a most startling way.

"Goodness me! are you hurt?" demanded Helen.

"What you got? A cramp?" asked Jennie, quite as solicitous.

"I know now who that girl looked like," declared Ruth.

"What girl?" rejoined Helen Cameron. "The one over yonder, on the other side of the island?"

"Yes. She looks just like that Maggie who came to the mill, Helen. You remember, don't you? The girl I left to help Aunt Alvirah when I came to college."

"Well, for the land's sake!" said Jennie Stone. "If she's up there at the Red Mill, how can she possibly be down here, too? You're talking out of order, Miss Fielding. Sit down!"

CHAPTER XIV

"OFT IN THE STILLY NIGHT"

Ruth Fielding could not get that surprising, that almost unbelievable, discovery out of her mind.

It seemed ridiculous to think that girl could be Maggie, "the waif," she had seen on Bliss Island. Aunt Alvirah had written Ruth a letter only a few days before and in it she said that Maggie was very helpful and seemed wholly content.

"Only," the little old housekeeper at the Red Mill wrote, "I don't know a mite more about the child now than I did when Mr. Tom Cameron and our Ben brought her in, all white and fainty-like."

The girls had to hurry on or be late to dinner. But the very first thing Ruth did when she reached their rooms in Dare Hall was to look up Aunt Alvirah's letter and see when it was dated and mailed.