Virginia's Adventure Club

CHAPTER I

THE ADVENTURE CLUB

“Now that the Christmas holidays are over,” Babs remarked on the first Monday evening after the close of the short vacation, “I mean to redeem myself.”

Margaret Selover looked down at the Dresden China girl who, her fluffy golden curls loosened from their fastenings, was wearing a blue corduroy kimona which matched her eyes. Babs sat tailorwise upon the furry white rug close to their grate fire.

Megsy laughed. “Which means?” she inquired as she sat in front of her birds-eye maple dressing table, brushing her pretty brown hair.

“Which means that I have determined to startle the natives by getting my name on the honor roll. Watchez-vous me! See if I don’t.”

“I certainly admire your French.” Margaret was donning her golden brown robe that was woolly and warm. Then, when she, too, was seated opposite her roommate, she inquired: “But why this sudden ambition? I thought your motto has always been ‘Learn as little as you can, for wisdom makes a stupid man.’”

“Well, doesn’t it?” Babs flashed. “Take Professor Crowell fer instance. He probably knows as much as the encyclopædia, and yet, who can deny but that he is stupid. He goes around ruminating on things that nobody else could understand, and he can’t even tell his own daughters apart.”

Margaret laughed. “Well, belovedest, I don’t think you and I are either of us in danger of becoming as wise as Professor Crowell, and as for telling Dora and Cora apart—who can? Certainly not Mrs. Martin, and they’ve been in this school since they were small.” Then more seriously, she clasped her hands over her drawn-up knees, Margaret continued: “But I would like to be as wise as Miss Torrence. When she is reading to us and there is a reference to someone or something that happened in the long ago, you know how her eyes brighten. She is seeing a picture that represents it. I know, because yesterday when I came across a reference to the Peripatetic school, I was as pleased as Punch. I knew at once that the Greek word meant ‘to walk,’ and that it had been used because Aristotle, the greatest of ancient philosophers, walked up and down in his garden while teaching. And so I have decided that, if learning does nothing else, it adds a lot to one’s own pleasure.”

Babs glanced at the clock over the mantle. “I don’t see why the girls don’t come,” she said, trying to suppress a little yawn. Margaret laughed and leaned over to poke up the fire. “My professorial discourse has evidently made you sleepy. Hark! I believe I hear approaching giggles.”

A merry tattoo on the closed door announced the arrival of the expected guests, and in they trooped, each wearing a bath robe or warm kimona of the color which the owner believed to be most becoming to her particular type of beauty.

Betsy Clossen, in a brilliant cherry-red robe, was the first to burst in. Then, observing the solemn faces of the two before the fire, she remarked inelegantly: “For Pete’s sake, who died? I thought we were going to have a giggle-fest to celebrate our reunion, after the long separation, and here are our hostesses looking as though they had just heard that they’d both failed in the final tests.”

The newcomers dropped down on chairs or floor, as they preferred. Barbara continued to look unusually solemn. “That’s just it,” she announced. Then to Margaret: “That’s why I told you awhile ago that I mean to redeem myself. I flunked on the holiday tests, and I was the only one in our crowd who did. Even Betsy—” She paused and there was a mischievous twinkle in the blue eyes that had been serious longer than was their wont.

“Believe me, I just got through by the skin of my teeth!” that maiden announced in her characteristic manner. “Spent too much time playing detective, and failed at that, too.”

“I’ll tell you what!” Virginia Davis, who had been a sympathetic listener, spoke for the first time. “Let’s have a study club and meet in one of our rooms every Saturday evening and have an oral review of the week’s work.”

“Ooh!” moaned Betsy; “that doesn’t sound very interesting.”

“I’m for it,” Babs announced; “and when the grind part is over, couldn’t we have refreshments?” This, hopefully.

“Why, of course. We are always allowed to make fudge on Saturday evening—” Virginia had begun, when Betsy put in: “Oh, I say; please change the name of it; then I’ll enjoy it heaps more, if one can enjoy anything related to learning.”

“Can’t we think up some name that won’t sound the least bit studious? Then we can have the real object a secret.”

“We might call it The Adventure Club if you would enjoy the meetings more than you would if we called it The Weekly Review.” Margaret smilingly suggested.

“I’m for it,” Betsy declared, then added doubtfully. “I suppose my new roommate will think she ought to be let in on it. Would any of you mind? She’s not such a bad sort.”

“Who did you draw, Bets? I thought you hoped you were to have your room alone this term.”’

“So did I, but Fate was agin’ me. Just as I was spreading my duds all over the room, thinking I was to be sole possessor, along came Mrs. Martin with a roommate for me. Since Sally MacLean didn’t come the first term, I didn’t ever expect her back again.”

“Sentimental Sally!” Babs and Megsy exclaimed in one breath. “Has she returned to Vine Haven?”

A doleful nod was Betsy’s only reply. Then she laughed gaily as though at some merry memory. “I suppose you girls who don’t know her are wondering why we call her ‘Sentimental Sally,’ and so I’ll tell you.”

“Well, proceed. We’re all ears, as the elephant’s child was once heard to remark,” Barbara said as she leaned back against Virginia, who sat in the easy willow chair.

“Is this Sentimental Sally, silly?” Virg inquired.

Betsy laughed. “Silly?” she repeated with rising inflection, “She’s worse than that. She’s bugs! Or rather, she was. I sort of think she’s cured. Time alone will tell.”

“Sally is always in love or thinks she is, which is perfectly ridiculous,” Margaret explained, “since she is only fifteen.”

“I’ve sometimes thought that if Sally had had brothers, as we have, she wouldn’t have had such foolish notions,” Barbara remarked. “You have the floor now, Betsy, tell the girls the woeful tale of Sally’s downfall.”

“Well, to begin at the beginning, Miss Snoopins, otherwise known as the Belligerent Buell, is death on members of the sex not fair.”

“Meaning boys,” Barbara put in.

“One of the rules that she made for the corridors was that no photographs of the objectionable creatures should be displayed in our rooms. Well, as usual, Sally was being sentimental about somebody, and the somebody was certainly a most good-looking boy. She called him ‘Donald Dear’ and raved about him whenever she could find anyone to listen.

“Of course she wanted to have his photo in her room, but that was against the rules, so she got around it in this way. Her grandmother’s picture was in a frame that was suspended between two little gilt pillars and could be swung over with the back to the front, so to speak. Sally fastened her Donald’s picture back of her grandmother’s photo, and when she was all alone in the room, the boy smiled out at her, but when she heard footsteps in the corridor, she darted to the mantel and turned it over that her grandmother’s face might be the one to greet whoever was about to enter. In this way Sally evaded Miss Snoopins for a long time, but we knew that a day of reckoning would surely come. Nor were we mistaken.

“We were all in her room on Thanksgiving. Maybe I ought to be ashamed to confess that, silly as we thought her, we were willing enough to partake of the spreads that came to her from a doting mother on any and all holidays. Sally is good-natured and she just adores me. Not much of a comp, considering her lack of brains, but anyway when we got a bid to her room for a Thanksgiving spread, we were all there, Megsy, Babs, Dicky Taylor and the present speaker. The craziest part of it was that we might have had that spread early in the evening, with permission, if we had wished, but that wouldn’t have been romantic enough to suit Sally. She wanted to wait until the lights-out bell had rung and then, when Miss Snoopins had passed down the hall, to be sure that the gong had been obeyed, she wanted us to all steal into her room, which we did. Sally then locked the door and hung a towel over the keyhole and drew the rug over the crack at the bottom. We forgot that light might also shine through the crack at the top. Then Sally lighted her prized candelabra and set it on the floor in the middle of a big paper table cloth. Oh, baby, it makes me hungry now to think of that spread. Say, Babs, do you remember how tender and juicy that turkey was? Yum! And those cranberries?” Megsy and Barbara nodded. Virginia smiled. “I’ve read boarding school stories,” she said, “and there was always some such prank. I suppose that just as the feast was about to be eaten, there came a knock on the door and—”

But Betsy shook her head. “No, not that soon, thanks be. We had the turkey devoured even to the bones and were starting on the dessert, when Sally happened to look up at the mantle. If there wasn’t the kindly-faced old grandmother smiling down at us. For once Sally had forgotten to turn it over. Up she sprang and ‘Donald Dear’ beamed out. Then, to prove just how sentimental she really was, Sally lighted two tiny candles, one on either side of the frame.

“He certainly was a handsome chap, and we all talked about him as we ate the delicious pumpkin pie. We asked Sally where she had met him, how old he was and if she were going to marry him when she grew up. She said yes indeed, that they were engaged and that he just adored her. The only reason that he didn’t write to her every day in the week was because pupils at Vine Haven weren’t allowed to have letters from boys. Of course we knew that. Now I happened to remember something which was, that the first time that Sally had told me about Donald, she had said that he was a class-mate of a boy cousin and that she had met him at her aunt’s summer home, but that night she told the girls that she had met Donald at a dance when she was visiting in Boston. Of course, being the daughter of the most famous detective that ever was, I noticed that discrepancy, though none of the other girls did, and I got suspicious at once. If Sally didn’t know where she had met the handsome Donald (we all agreed he was that), the question was had she really met him at all?

“However, I didn’t want to spoil the spread by asking any embarrassing questions, but you know how tickled I was to have something to detect. Well, I was just eating my last luscious bite of mince pie when I pricked up an ear, so to speak. ‘Hist!’ I whispered, holding up one finger. ‘Didst hear a prowler?’ The girls all sprang up on the alert.

“Of course we expected Miss Snoopins to appear and were prepared for the worst.”

The narrator paused to be sure that she had properly aroused the curiosity of her listeners, and then she continued: “There was no mistaking the fact that there were footfalls without, then a voice said: ‘Open the door, young ladies, if you please.’ And it wasn’t the voice of Miss Snoopins. It was no less a personage than Mrs. Martin who stood there when the door was opened. Sally had at once darted to the mantel to reverse the picture in the swinging frame, but we made no attempt to hide the feast. It just couldn’t be done. My! but weren’t we skeered! We were sure we’d all get our walking papers, but though Mrs. Martin delivered a short lecture on setting an example to younger girls, she said kindly: ‘This was absolutely unnecessary, Sally, for you know I am always perfectly willing to permit you to share the box of good things that your mother sends you.’

“Miss Snoopins, who of course had brought Mrs. Martin, stood back of our beloved principal and she fairly glared at us. One could plainly see that she was boiling within and more than ever wrathful because Mrs. Martin was not severe. Suddenly her X-ray glance, which had been sweeping over the floor with its evidences of guilt, chanced to fall upon the mantel. Into the room she strode, looking like a caricature in her flannel nightie, her skimpy kimona and her flapping bedroom slippers. Never before had her nose looked so long and peaked or her thin hair so tightly drawn back. When Sally saw the direction she was taking she looked, and to her horror she beheld that in her haste she had whirled the picture over twice, and that Donald dear was again smiling down upon the company.

“Mrs. Martin, having asked us to promise that we would obtain permission to have a feast, in the future, had retired and so she did not hear or see what followed. Miss Snoopins’ green eyes fairly snapped. ‘Sally MacLean, is that a boy’s picture?’ she demanded.

“There being no answer needed, Sally gave none, but she felt like crying, she said, when the belligerent Buell snatched it from the back of the frame to which it had been pinned and tore it into shreds. Even the pieces she thrust into the pocket of her kimona. ‘One hundred buttonholes in garments for the heathen,’ she said in no quiet voice. In fact, all the girls on our corridor were awakened, and the first to thrust their heads in at the door were Dora and Cora Crowell, and weren’t they mad when they saw that we had had a feast and that they weren’t in on it, but they were all back in their rooms before Miss Snoopins left which she did after ordering us out and watching us go.

“Sally said she cried all night. She didn’t care to live without a picture of her dear Donald. I said her cousin could send her another picture of his roommate, but she didn’t reply. However, she looked so sort of queer that I was more than ever sure that she was just using her imagination.

“Nothing happened until Valentine’s day, and you remember, Megsy, that Mrs. Martin said that Benjy Wilson might bring over a few of his friends from the Drexel Military Academy to call and that one of the teachers, Miss King, if she were free, would act as chaperone.

“That was a great occasion for the girls. Mrs. Martin excused us from classes, as the calls were to be in the afternoon and Miss King took that opportunity to drill us in how to receive visitors. After half an hour of practice we skipped up to our rooms to get ready. We put on our prettiest white dresses with gay colored sashes. Margaret and Babs were to pour chocolate and Sally and I were to pass plates of wafers. This reception was for all of our sophomore and senior girls. Of course, Sentimental Sally was more excited than any of the rest of us, although we were all interested. It was a pleasant break in the monotony of school life. Eleanor Pettes had a single room at the front of the house last year, and just as we were all dressed and waiting for a signal to call us downstairs, Eleanor beckoned and we flocked to her room. ‘Here they come,’ she whispered, as though they could hear, ‘and don’t they look handsome, all of them in blue and gold dress uniforms.’

“They certainly did. There were about fifteen boys walking two by two with Sergeant Hinkle, one of the seniors, in charge. Sally had been at her mirror arranging her yellow curls in just the right places, and so she hadn’t looked out the window, but she was ready a second later when Miss King appeared to lead us downstairs.

“The boys were standing about in the library looking at the books on the shelves or pretending to when we entered. Miss King spoke first with Sergeant Hinkle, and then we were all introduced in a rather general way, and we stood about talking in groups. I said to Sally: ‘There are two boys over by the window and they look lonely. Let’s go and talk with them.’

“‘All right,’ Sally agreed, ‘you lead the way.’

“Sally followed as I wedged through the groups, but when we got there we found only one boy who stood with his arms folded looking about the room with rather an amused expression on his really good-looking face. He turned toward us questioningly for Sally had uttered a little cry of amazement and had put her hand to her heart.

“Of course, I had recognized the boy at once. He was Donald Dear! He looked at us pleasantly, even curiously, as he noted Sally’s very evident agitation, but it was perfectly plain to me that he had never seen either of us before.

“‘What did Sally say?’ Virginia inquired.

“‘She didn’t say—she bolted! She went up to her room and when the callers were gone I found her there in tears.’

“‘She said that we’d all think she was a fibber, and that’s what she really had been, for she hadn’t the least idea who the boy was in the photograph. She just knew that he was a football player whose picture was among a lot that her cousin had brought home from school. She said she was just crazy about him and always would be.’

“‘Did Sally ever see him again?’ Virg inquired.

“‘No, I guess not. Benjy said that Donald Dearing went to France soon after that to be with his father, who was stationed there.’

“Margaret looked meditatively into the fire. ‘If only girls knew how much more boys like them when they are not sentimental,’ she said, ‘they would all try to be just good comrades.’

“‘Sally didn’t return to Vine Haven the next term,’ Betsy continued. ‘Honestly, I felt sorry for her, and so I wrote her a Christmas letter and told her the girls didn’t hold it against her because she had used her imagination. She was so happy to get that letter and she packed right up and came back to school.’

“‘Poor girl!’ Virginia said kindly. ‘Do bring her to the meetings of The Adventure Club. Perhaps it will do her a lot of good. Don’t you think so, everybody?’

“Babs and Margaret nodded. ‘I always liked Sally, and I’m pretty sure that she won’t be sentimental again,’ Megsy replied.”

A get-ready-for-bed gong was pealing through the corridors and the girls arose. “This is Monday,” Babs announced. “I’m going to study like a good one, so I’ll know every question asked me at the Saturday Evening Review.”