Ruth Fielding At College: or, The Missing Examination Papers

CHAPTER X
A TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT

Arrangements for the organization of the freshman class had lagged.

This fact may have been behind the notice put upon the bulletin boards all over the Ardmore grounds some time after bedtime one evening and before the rising bell rang the next morning. It intimated a bit of hazing, but hazing of a quality that the faculty could only wink at.

The notice was as follows:

FRESHMEN

It is the command of the Senior Class of Ardmore that no Freshman shall appear within the college grounds wearing a tam-o'-shanter of any other hue save the herewith designated color, to wit: Baby Blue. This order is for the mental and spiritual good of the incoming class of Freshmen. Any member of said class refusing to obey this order will be summarily dealt with by the upper classes of Ardmore.

Groups gathered immediately after breakfast about the bulletin boards. Of course, the seniors and juniors passed by with dignified bearing, and without comment. The sophomores remained upon the outskirts of the groups of excited freshmen to laugh and jeer.

"A disturbed bumblebees' nest could have hummed no louder," Helen declared, as the three friends walked up to chapel, which they made a point of attending.

"Why! to think of the cheek of those seniors!" ejaculated Jennie. "And the juniors are just as bad!"

"What are you going to do about that tam of yours, Heavy?" asked Ruth, slily. "It's a gay thing – nothing like baby blue."

"Oh well," growled the fleshy girl, "baby blue is one of my favorite colors."

"Mine, too," said Ruth, drily.

"Oh, girls! Are you going to give right in —so easy?" gasped Helen.

"I don't feel like making myself conspicuous," Ruth said. "You can wager that most of our class will hustle right off and get the proper hue in tams."

"Then we'd better go to town this very afternoon," Jennie cried, in haste, "and see if we can find three of baby blue shade. The stores will be drained of them by to-morrow."

"But to give – right – in!" wailed Helen, who dearly loved a fight.

"No. It isn't that. But, as the advertisements say: 'Eventually, so why not now?' We'll have to come to it. Let's get our tams while the tamming's good."

Helen could not see the reason for obeying the senior order; but she could see no reason, either, for not following her chum's lead. The three girls telephoned for a taxicab, which came to Dare Hall for them at half past three.

They were not the only girls going to town; but some of the freshmen, like Helen, wished to display their independence and refused – as yet – to obey the senior command.

A line at the bottom of the notice announced that three days were allowed the freshmen to obtain their proper tam-o'-shanters.

"Three days!" gasped Heavy, as they started off in the little car. "Why, it will take the stores in Greenburg two weeks to supply sufficient tams of the proper color."

"Then if we don't get ours," laughed Ruth, "we'd better go bareheaded until the new tams can be sent us from home."

"I won't do that!" cried the annoyed Helen. "Oh! oh!" she exclaimed, the next moment, and before they were out of the grounds. "See Miss Frayne! She has her scrambled-egg tam on."

"Don't you suppose she has read the notice?" worried Ruth.

"Why hasn't she?"

"Well, she seems to flock together with herself so much. Nobody seems to be chummy with her – yet," Ruth explained.

"Now, old Mother Worry!" exclaimed Helen, "bother about her, will you?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Ruth, demurely. "I shall, I suppose."

"Goodness, Ruth!" cried Jennie.

They discovered a rather strange thing when they arrived in Greenburg and entered the first store that dealt in ladies' apparel. Oh, yes, indeed! the proprietor had tam-o'-shanters of just the required shade, baby blue. The friends bought immediately for fear some of the other girls who had come to town would find these and buy the proprietor out.

And then, prone to the usual feminine frailty, they went "window shopping." And in every store seeking trade from the college girls they found the baby blue tam-o'-shanters.

"It's the most astonishing thing!" gasped Helen. "What do you suppose it means? Did you ever see so many caps of one kind and color in all your life?"

"It is amazing," agreed Ruth. Yet she was reflective.

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?"