Ruth Fielding At College: or, The Missing Examination Papers

CHAPTER XVI
WHAT WAS IN REBECCA'S TRUNK

The two chums did not speak a word to each other until they had recovered their snowshoes and set out down the rough side of Bliss Island for the ice. Then Helen sputtered:

"People like that! Did you ever see such a person? I never was so insulted – "

"Pshaw! She was right – in a way," Ruth said coolly. "We had no real business to pry into her affairs."

"Well!"

"I got you into it. I'm sorry," the girl of the Red Mill said. "I thought it really was Maggie, or I wouldn't have come over here."

"She's something like that Maggie girl," proclaimed Helen. "She was nice, I thought."

"Maybe this girl is nice, taken under other circumstances," laughed Ruth. "I really would like to know what she is over here for."

"No good, I'll be bound," said the pessimistic Helen.

"And another thing," Ruth went on to say, as she and her chum reached the level of the frozen lake, "did you notice that pick handle?"

"That what?" demanded Helen, in amazement.

"Pickaxe handle – I believe it was," Ruth said thoughtfully. "It was thrust out of the snow pile she had scraped away from the boulder. And, moreover, the ground looked as though it had been dug into."

"Why, the ground is as hard as the rock itself," Helen cried. "There are six or eight inches of frost right now."

"I guess that's so," agreed Ruth. "Perhaps that's why she built such a big fire."

"What do you mean, Ruth Fielding?" cried her chum.

"I think she wanted to dig there for something," Ruth replied reflectively. "I wonder what for?"

When they had returned to Dare Hall and had got their things off and were warm again, they looked out of the window. The campfire on the island had died out.

"She's gone away, of course," sighed Ruth. "But I would like to know what she was there for."

"One of the mysteries of life," said Helen, as she made ready for bed. "Dear me, but I'm tired!"

She was asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. Not so Ruth. The latter lay awake some time wondering about the odd girl on the island and her errand there.

Ruth Fielding had another girl's troubles on her mind, however – and a girl much closer to her. The girl on the island merely teased her imagination. Rebecca Frayne's difficulties seemed much more important to Ruth.

Of course, there was no real reason for Ruth to take up cudgels for her odd classmate. Indeed, she did not feel that she could do that, for she was quite convinced that Rebecca Frayne was wrong. Nevertheless, she was very sorry for the girl. The trouble over the tam-o'-shanter had become the most talked-of incident of the school term. For the several following days Rebecca was scarcely seen outside her room, save in going to and from her classes.

She did not again appear in the dining hall. How she arranged about meals Ruth and her friends could not imagine. Then the housekeeper admitted to Ruth that she had allowed the lonely girl to get her own little meals in her room, as she had cooking utensils and an alcohol lamp.

"It is not usually allowed, I know. But Miss Frayne seems to have come to college prepared to live in just that way. She is a small eater, anyway. And – well, anything to avoid friction."

"Of course," Ruth said to Helen and Jennie Stone, "lots of girls live in furnished rooms and get their own meals – working girls and students. But it is not a system generally allowed at college, and at Ardmore especially. We shall hear from the faculty about it before the matter is done with."

"Well, we're not doing it," scoffed Jennie. "And that Rebecca Frayne is behaving like a chump."

"But how she does stick to that awful tam!" groaned Helen.

"Stubborn as a mule," agreed Jennie.

"I saw her with another hat on to-day," said Ruth, reflectively.

"That's so! It was the one she wore the day she arrived," Helen said quickly. "A summer hat. I wonder what she did bring in that trunk, anyway? She has displayed no such charming array of finery as I expected."

Ruth did not discuss this point. She was more interested in the state of Rebecca's mind, though, of course, there was not much time for her to give to anything but her studies and regular duties now, for as the term advanced the freshmen found their hours pretty well filled.

Scrub teams for certain indoor sports had been made up, and even Jennie Stone took up the playing of basketball with vigor. She was really losing flesh. She kept a card tacked upon her door on which she set down the fluctuations of her bodily changes daily. When she lost a whole pound in weight she wrote it down in red ink.

Their activities kept the three friends well occupied, both physically and mentally. Yet Ruth Fielding could not feel wholly satisfied or content when she knew that one of her mates was in trouble. She had taken an interest in Rebecca Frayne at the beginning of the semester; yet of all the freshmen Rebecca was the one whom she knew the least.

"And that poor girl needs somebody for a friend – I feel it!" Ruth told herself. "Of course, she is to blame for the situation in which she now is. But for that very reason she ought to have somebody with whom to talk it over."

Ruth determined to be that confidant of the girl who seemed to wish no associate and no confidant. She began to loiter in the corridors between recitation hours and at odd times. Whenever she knocked on Rebecca's door there was no reply. Other girls who had tried it quickly gave up their sympathetic attentions. If the foolish girl wished for no friends, let her go her own way. That became the attitude of the freshman class. Of course, the sophomores followed the lead of the seniors and the juniors, having as little to do with the unfortunate girl as possible.

But the day and hour came at last when Ruth chanced to be right at hand when Rebecca Frayne came in and unlocked her room door. Her arms were full of small packages. Ruth knew that she had walked all the way to the grocery store on the edge of Greenburg, which the college girls often patronized.

It had been a long, cold walk, and Rebecca's fingers were numb. She dropped a paper bag – and it contained eggs!

Now, it is quite impossible to hide the fact of a dropped egg. At another time Ruth might have laughed; but now she soberly retrieved the paper bag before the broken eggs could do much damage, and stepped into the room after the nervous Rebecca.

"Oh, thank you!" gasped the girl. "Put – put them down anywhere. Thank you!"

"My goodness!" said Ruth, laughing, "you can't put broken eggs down anywhere. Don't you see they are runny?"

"Never mind, Miss Fielding – "

"Oh! you've a regular kitchenette here, haven't you?" said Ruth, emboldened to look behind a curtain. "How cunning. I'll put these eggs in this clean dish. Mercy, but they are scrambled!"

"Don't trouble, Miss Fielding. You are very kind."

"But scrambled eggs are pretty good, at that," Ruth went on, unheeding the other girl's nervousness. "If you can only get the broken shells out of them," and she began coolly to do this with a fork. "I should think you would not like eating alone, Rebecca."

The other girl stared at her. "How can I help it?" she asked harshly.

"Just by getting a proper tam and stop being stubborn," Ruth told her.

"Miss Fielding!" cried Rebecca, her face flushing. "Do you think I do this for – for fun?"

"You must. It isn't a disease, is it?" and Ruth laughed aloud, determined to refuse to take the other's tragic words seriously.

"You – you are unbearable!" gasped Rebecca.

"No, I'm not. I want to be your friend," Ruth declared boldly. "I want you to have other friends, too. No use flocking by one's self at college. Why, my dear girl! you are missing all that is best in college life."

"I'd like to know what is best in college life!" burst out Rebecca Frayne, sullenly.

"Friendship. Companionship. The rubbing of one mind against another," Ruth said promptly.

"Pooh!" returned the startled Rebecca. "I wouldn't want to rub my mind against some of these girls' minds. All I ever hear them talk about is dress or amusements."

"I don't think you know many of the other girls well enough to judge the calibre of their minds," said Ruth, gently.

"And why don't I?" demanded Rebecca, still with a sort of suppressed fury.

"We all judge more or less by appearances," Ruth admitted slowly. "I presume you, too, were judged that way."

"What do you mean, Miss Fielding?" asked Rebecca, more mildly.

"When you came here to Ardmore you made a first impression. We all do," Ruth said.

"Yes," Rebecca admitted, with a slight curl of her lip. She was naturally a proud-looking girl, and she seemed actually haughty now. "I was mistaken for you, I believe."

Ruth laughed heartily at that.

"I should be a good friend of yours," she said. "It was a great sell on those sophomores. They had determined to make poor little me suffer for some small notoriety I had gained at boarding school."

"I never went to boarding school," snapped Rebecca. "I never was anywhere till I came to college. Just to our local schools. I worked hard, let me tell you, to pass the examinations to get in here."

"And why don't you let your mind broaden and get the best there is to be had at Ardmore?" Ruth demanded, quickly. "The girls misunderstand you. I can see that. We freshmen have got to bow our heads to the will of the upper classes. It doesn't hurt – much," and she laughed again.

"Do you think I am wearing this old tam because I am stubborn?" demanded the other girl, again with that fierceness that seemed so strange in one so young.

"Why – aren't you?"

"No."

"Why do you wear it, then?" asked Ruth, wonderingly.

"Because I cannot afford to buy another!"

Rebecca Frayne said this in so tense a voice that Ruth was fairly staggered. The girl of the Red Mill gazed upon the other's flaming face for a full minute without making any reply. Then, faintly, she said:

"I – I didn't understand, Rebecca. We none of us do, I guess. You came here in such style! That heavy trunk and those bags – "

"All out of our attic," said the other, sharply. "Did you think them filled with frocks and furbelows? See here!"

Ruth had already noticed the packages of papers piled along one wall of the room. Rebecca pointed to them.

"Out of our attic, too," she said, with a scornful laugh that was really no laugh at all. "Old papers that have lain there since the Civil War."

"But, Rebecca – "

"Why did I do it?" put in the other, in the same hard voice. "Because I was a little fool. Because I did not understand.

"I didn't know just what college was like. I never talked with a girl from college in my life. I thought this was a place where only rich girls were welcome."

"Oh, Rebecca!" cried Ruth. "That isn't so."

"I see it now," agreed the other girl, shortly. "But we always have had to make a bluff at our house. Since I can remember, at least. Grandfather was wealthy; but our generation is as poor as Job's turkey.

"I didn't want to appear poor when I arrived here; so I got out the old bags and the big trunk, filled them with papers, and brought them along. A friend lent me that car I arrived in. I – I thought I'd make a splurge right at first, and then my social standing would not be questioned."

"Oh, Rebecca! How foolish," murmured Ruth.

"Don't say that!" stormed the girl. "I see that I started all wrong. But I can't help it now," and suddenly she burst into a passion of weeping.

CHAPTER XVII
WHAT WAS IN REBECCA'S HEART

It was some time before Ruth could quiet the almost hysterical girl. Rebecca Frayne had held herself in check so long, and the bitterness of her position had so festered in her mind, that now the barriers were burst she could not control herself.

But Ruth Fielding was sympathetic. And her heart went out to this lonely and foolish girl as it seldom had to any person in distress. She felt, too, did Ruth, as though it was partly her fault and the fault of the other freshmen that Rebecca was in this state of mind.

She was fearful that having actually forced herself upon Rebecca that the girl might, when she came to herself, turn against her. But at present Rebecca's heart was so full that it spilled over, once having found a confidant.

In Ruth Fielding's arms the unfortunate girl told a story that, if supremely silly from one standpoint, was a perfectly natural and not uncommon story.

She was a girl, born and brought up in a quiet, small town, living in the biggest and finest house in that town, yet having suffered actual privations all her life for the sake of keeping up appearances.

The Frayne family was supposed to be wealthy. Not as wealthy as a generation or so before; still, the Fraynes were looked upon as the leaders in local society.

There was now only an aunt, Rebecca, a younger sister, and a brother who was in New York struggling upward in a commission house.

"And if it were not for the little Fred can spare me and sends me twice a month, I couldn't stay here," Rebecca confessed during this long talk with Ruth. "He's the best boy who ever lived."

"He must be," Ruth agreed. "I'd be glad to have a brother like that."

Rebecca had been hungry for books. She had always hoped to take a college course.

"But I was ignorant of everything," she sighed.

Ruth gathered, too, that the aunt, who was at the nominal head of the Frayne household, was also ignorant. This Aunt Emmy seemed to be an empty-headed creature who thought that the most essential thing for a girl in life was to be fancifully dressed, and to attain a position in society.

Aunt Emmy had evidently filled Rebecca's head with such notions. The girl had come to Ardmore with a totally wrong idea of what it meant to be in college.

"Why! some of these girls act as waitresses," said Rebecca. "I couldn't do that even to obtain the education I want so much. Oh! Aunt Emmy would never hear to it."

"It's a perfectly legitimate way of helping earn one's tuition," Ruth said.

"The Fraynes have never done such things," the other girl said haughtily.

And right there and then Ruth decided that Rebecca Frayne was going to have a very hard time, indeed, at Ardmore unless she learned to look upon life quite differently from the way she had been taught at home.

Already Ruth Fielding had seen enough at Ardmore to know that many of the very girls whose duties Rebecca scorned, were getting more out of their college life than Rebecca Frayne could possibly get unless she took a radically different view of life and its comparative values from that her present standards gave her.

The girls who were waitresses, and did other work to help pay for their tuition or for their board were busy and happy and were respected by their mates. In addition, they were often the best scholars in the classes.

Rebecca was wrong in scorning those who combined domestic service with an attempt to obtain an education. But Ruth was wise enough to see that this feeling was inbred in Rebecca. It was useless to try to change her opinion upon it.

If Rebecca were poverty-stricken, her purse could not be replenished by any such means as these other girls found to help them over the hard places. In this matter of the tam-o'-shanter, for instance, it would be very difficult to help the girl. Ruth knew better than to offer to pay for the new tam-o'-shanter the freshman could not afford to buy. To make such an offer would immediately close the door of the strange girl's friendship to Ruth. So she did not hint at such a thing. She talked on, beginning to laugh and joke with Rebecca, and finally brought her out of her tears.

"Cheer up," Ruth said. "You are making the worst possible use of your time here – keeping to yourself and being so afraid of making friends. We're not all rich girls, I assure you. And the girls on this corridor are particularly nice."

"I suppose that may be. But if everywhere I go they show so plainly they don't want me – "

"That will stop!" cried Ruth, vigorously. "If I have to go to Dr. Milroth myself, it shall be stopped. It is hazing of the crudest kind. Oh! what a prettily crocheted table-mat. It's old-fashioned, but pretty."

"Aunty does that, almost all the time," Rebecca said, with a little laugh. "Fred once said – in confidence, of course – that half the family income goes for Aunt Emmy's wool."

"Do you do it, too?" Ruth asked suspiciously.

"Oh yes. I can."

"Say! could you crochet one of these tams?" cried Ruth, eagerly.

"Why – I suppose so," admitted the other girl.

"Then, why not? Do it to please the seniors and juniors. It won't hurt to bow to a custom, will it? And you only need buy a few hanks of wool at a time."

Rebecca's face flamed again; but she took the suggestion, after all, with some meekness.

"I might do that," she admitted.

"All right. Then you'll be doing your part. And talk to the girls. Let them talk to you. Come down to the dining-room for your meals again. You know, the housekeeper, Mrs. Ebbets, will soon be getting into trouble about you. Somebody will talk to Dr. Milroth or to some other member of the upper faculty."

"I suppose so," groaned Rebecca. "They won't let poor little me alone."

"Oh, you can't expect to have your own way at school," cried Ruth, laughing. "Oh, and say!"

"Well, Miss Fielding?"

"Do call me Ruth," begged the girl of the Red Mill. "It won't cost you a cent more," but she said it so good-naturedly that Rebecca had to laugh.

"I will," said the other girl, vehemently. "You are the very nicest little thing!"

"Well, now that's settled," laughed Ruth, "do something for me, will you?"

"Any – anything I can," agreed Rebecca, with some doubt.

"You know we girls on this corridor are going to have a sitting-room all to ourselves. That corner room that is empty. Everybody is going to buy – is going to give something to help furnish the room."

"Oh, Ruth! I can't – "

"Yes you can," interrupted Ruth, quickly. "When you stop this foolish eating by yourself, you can bring over your alcohol lamp. It's just what we want to make tea on. Now, say you will, Rebecca!"

"I – I will. Why, yes, I can do that," Rebecca agreed.

"Goody! I'll tell the girls. And you'll be as welcome as the flowers in May, lamp or no lamp," she cried, kissing Rebecca again and bustling out of the room.

CHAPTER XVIII
BEARDING THE LIONS

Ruth had shown a very cheerful face before Rebecca Frayne, but when she was once out of the room the girl of the Red Mill did not show such a superabundance of cheerfulness.

She knew well enough that Rebecca had become so unpopular that public opinion could not be changed regarding her in a moment.

Besides, there were the two upper classes to be considered. Their order regarding the freshmen's head-covering had been flagrantly disobeyed, and would have to be disobeyed for some time to come. A girl cannot crochet a tam-o'-shanter in a minute.

Having undertaken to straighten out Rebecca Frayne's troubles, however, Ruth did not publicly shrink from the task. She was one who made up her mind quickly, and having made it up, set to work immediately to carry the matter through.

Merry Dexter, the first senior she had met upon coming to Ardmore, was kindly disposed toward her, and Ruth knew that Miss Dexter was an influential member of her class. Therefore, Ruth took her trouble – and Rebecca's – directly to Miss Dexter.

Yet, she did not feel that she had a right to explain, even to this one senior, all that Rebecca Frayne had confided to her. She realized that the girl, with her false standards of respectability and social standing, would never be able to hold up her head at college if her real financial situation were known to the girls in general. Ruth was bound, however, to take Miss Dexter somewhat into her confidence to obtain a hearing. She put the matter before the senior as nicely as possible, saying in conclusion:

"And she will knit herself a tam of the proper color just as soon as possible. No girl, you know, Miss Dexter, likes to admit that she is poor. It is dreadfully embarrassing. So I hope that this matter will be adjusted without her situation being discussed."

"Goodness! I can't change things," the senior declared. "Not unless that girl agrees to do as she is told – like the rest of you freshies."

"Then my opinion of your class, Miss Dexter," Ruth said firmly, "must be entirely wrong. I did not believe that they ordered us to wear baby blue tams just out of an arbitrary desire to make us obey. Had I believed that I would not have bought a new tam myself!"

"You wouldn't?"

"No, Miss Dexter. Nor would a great many of us freshmen. We believed the order had a deeper significance – and it had. It helped our class get together. We are combined now, we are a social body. And I believe that if I took this matter up with Rebecca's class, and explained just her situation to them (which, of course, I do not want to do), the freshmen as a whole would back me in a revolt against the upper classes."

"You're pretty sure of that, Ruth Fielding, are you?" demanded the senior.

"Yes, I am. We'd all refuse to wear the new tams. You seniors and juniors would have a nice time sending us all to Coventry, wouldn't you? If you didn't want to eat with us, you'd all go hungry for a long time before the freshmen would do as Rebecca foolishly did."

Miss Dexter laughed at that. And then she hugged Ruth.

"I believe you are a dear girl, with a lot of good sense in your head," she said. "But you must come before our executive committee and talk to them."

"Oh, dear! Beard the lions in their den?" cried Ruth.

"Yes, my dear. I cannot be your spokesman."

Ruth found this a harder task than she had bargained for; but she went that same evening to a hastily called meeting of the senior committee. Perhaps Miss Dexter had done more for her than she agreed, however, for Ruth found these older girls very kind and she seemingly made them easily understand Rebecca's situation without being obliged to say in just so many words that the girl was actually poverty-stricken.

And it was probable, too, that Ruth Fielding helped herself in this incident as much as she did her classmate. The members of the older classes thereafter gave the girl of the Red Mill considerably more attention than she had previously received. Ruth began to feel surprised that she had so many warm friends and pleasant acquaintances in the college, even among the sophomores of Edith Phelps' stamp. Edith Phelps found her tart jokes about the "canned-drama authoress" falling rather flat, so she dropped the matter.

Older girls stopped on the walks to talk to Ruth. They sat beside her in chapel and at other assemblies, and seemed to like to talk with her. Although Ruth did not hold an office in her own class organization, yet she bade fair to become soon the most popular freshman at Ardmore.

Ruth was perfectly unconscious of this fact, for she had not a spark of vanity in her make-up. Her mind was so filled with other and more important things that her social conquests impressed her but little. She did, however, think a good bit about poor Rebecca Frayne's situation. She warned her personal friends among the freshmen, especially those at Dare Hall, to say nothing to Rebecca about the unfortunate affair.

Rebecca came into the dining-room again. Ruth knew that she had actually begun to crochet a baby blue tam-o'-shanter. But it was a question in Ruth's mind if the odd girl would be able to "keep up appearances" on the little money she had left and that which her brother could send her from time to time. It was quite tragic, after all. Rebecca was sure of good and sufficient food as long as she could pay her board; but the girl undoubtedly needed other things which she could not purchase.

Naturally, youth cannot give its entire attention to even so tragic a matter as this. Ruth's gay friends acted as counterweights in her mind to Rebecca's troubles.

The girls were out on the lake very frequently as the cold weather continued; but Ruth never saw again the strange girl whom she and Helen had interviewed at night on Bliss Island.

Hearing from Aunt Alvirah as she did with more or less frequency, the girl of the Red Mill was assured that Maggie seemed content and was proving a great help to the crippled old housekeeper. Maggie seemed quite settled in her situation.

"Just because that queer girl looked like Maggie doesn't prove that Maggie knows her," Ruth told herself. "Still – it's odd."

Stormy weather kept the college girls indoors a good deal; and the general sitting-room on Ruth's corridor became the most social spot in the whole college.

The girls whose dormitory rooms were there, irrespective of class, all shared in the furnishing of the sitting-room. Second-hand furniture is always to be had of dealers near an institution like Ardmore. Besides, the girls all owned little things they could spare for the general comfort, like Rebecca Frayne's alcohol lamp.

Helen had a tea set; somebody else furnished trays. In fact, all the "comforts of home" were supplied to that sitting-room; and the girls were considered very fortunate by their mates in other parts of the hall, and, indeed, in the other three dormitory buildings.

But during the holiday recess something happened that bade fair to deprive Ruth and her friends of their special perquisite. Dr. McCurdy's wife's sister came to Ardmore. The McCurdys did not keep house, preferring to board. They could find no room for Mrs. Jaynes, until it was remembered that there was an unassigned dormitory room at Dare Hall.

Many of the girls had gone home over the brief holidays; but our three friends from Briarwood had remained at Ardmore.

So Ruth and Helen and Jennie Stone chanced to be among the girls present when the housekeeper of Dare Hall came into the sitting-room and, to quote Jennie, informed them that they must "vamoose the ranch."

"That is what Ann Hicks would call it," Jennie said, defending her language when taken to task for it. "We've just got to get out – and it's a mean shame."

Dr. McCurdy was one of the important members of the faculty. Of course, the girls on that corridor had no real right to the extra room. All they could do was to voice their disappointment – and they did that, one may be sure, with vociferation.

"And just when we had come to be so comfortably fixed here," groaned one, when the housekeeper had departed. "I know I shall dis-like that Mrs. Jaynes extremely."

"We won't speak to her!" cried Helen, in a somewhat vixenish tone.

"Maybe she won't care if we don't," laughed Ruth.

But it was no laughing matter, as they all felt. They made a gloomy party in the pretty sitting-room that last evening of its occupancy as a community resort.

"There's Clara Mayberry in her rocker again on that squeaky board," Rebecca Frayne remarked. "I hope she rocks on that board every evening over this woman's head who has turned us out."

"Let's all hope so," murmured Helen.

Jennie Stone suddenly sat upright in the rocker she was occupying, but continued to glare at the ceiling. A board in the floor of the room above had frequently annoyed them before. Clara Mayberry sometimes forgot and placed her rocker on that particular spot.

"If – if she had to listen to that long," gasped Jennie suddenly, "she would go crazy. She's just that kind of nervous female. I saw her at chapel this morning."

"But even Clara couldn't stand the squeak of that board long," Ruth observed, smiling.

Without another word Jennie left the room. She came back later, so full of mystery, as Helen declared, that she seemed on the verge of bursting.

However, Jennie refused to explain herself in any particular; but the board in Clara Mayberry's room did not squeak again that evening.