The Orchard Secret Part 2

"Oh, but Sim!" burst out Arden. "The pool will be fixed. They've just got to fix it! We'll have it repaired. If it's a little money they need, we'll get that, somehow. If you two will help----"

"Of course we'll help," Terry was quick to offer. "But you'll never get the money! How can you?"

"I don't know, Terry, but there'll be a way, I'm sure." With a gayety she did not feel, Arden stood on her large suitcase, raised one hand as though drinking a toast, and exclaimed:

"To the pool! May it never be a pool of tears!"

"Oh, my word!" gasped Terry. "My word, Arden Blake! Get off that suitcase! You must be standing right on the fruit-cake!"

"Fruit-cake!" echoed Sim. "Is there a fruit-cake? If there is, Arden, get off it! For if some of the stories the old grads tell are true, we'll be mighty glad to have that fruit-cake before long."

"Don't get excited, my pets!" mocked Arden, lightly descending. "It's Terry's cake, but she didn't have room for it in her bag so I packed it in mine. But it's in a tin box. So you shall have your cake and also your swimming pool, Sim, my dear!"

Smiling, Arden opened the suitcase and took out a gold and red tin box which she set in the center of the middle bureau. With the electrics switched on, the red and gold box gave a high light to the room, a fact to which Terry immediately called attention. She added:

"As soon as we can go to town we must get spreads for the beds and covers to match for the bureaus. And I'll have my globe sent up from home. I always think a globe makes a room look as though it were inhabited by a student. And perhaps a lamp with a green shade. Oh, do let's hurry and unpack!"

Terry was almost breathless, but her eyes were s.h.i.+ning and Arden, who was beginning to worry over the responsibility she had a.s.sumed in urging her chums to come to Cedar Ridge, felt she would not have to be concerned for Terry, at least.

"I'll take the bed nearest the door, as you know I'm apt to be a 'leetle-mite' slow," drawled Terry. "You take the one nearest the window, Arden. Then you can look up at the stars."

Sim laughed and said: "I'll take the middle bed so----"

"So you can be the meat in the sandwich, little one!" interrupted Terry.

"I'm not so little, Terry Landry! It's just because you're such a giantess!" declared Sim indignantly.

"Stop teasing her, Terry! It'll soon be time to go to the Hall, and we haven't so much as washed our faces. Besides----"

Before Arden could finish her speech, the sort Terry called "Arden's good-will talk," there sounded a loud knock on the door.

Without waiting to be invited, Toots Everett, the tall blonde guide, entered with two other girls.

"Stand at attention, fres.h.i.+es!" Toots loudly commanded. "I am Miss Everett. The girl on my right is Miss Darglan and on my left Miss MacGovern. We three have picked you three to haze, when the proper time comes. I'll take the red-head, Jessica," she said to the girl on her right.

"I'll take the baby," decided the soph.o.m.ore called Jessica. "That leaves the black-haired G.o.ddess for you, Pip. Don't be too hard with her," she mocked. "She looks as if she had led a sheltered life."

"But," began Sim, "we don't----"

"We'll do the talking," interrupted Miss Everett coldly. "You girls will report to us every day after cla.s.ses, for a while. Your time is, henceforth, our time. We hope you have good const.i.tutions. Our room is 416 on the floor below. See that you keep it in good order!"

"Oh, my friends, look!" suddenly exclaimed Pip MacGovern, indicating the fruit-cake in plain sight. "A goodie from home that we must not overlook.

It is also to be hoped that you fres.h.i.+es brought a tea set and the wherewithals to go with it."

"Yes," timidly admitted Terry, "we have----"

She was interrupted by a surrept.i.tious kick from Sim.

"Good!" declared Toots. "I can see where you three will be very useful to us!" she exulted. "Does anyone care for a piece of cake?" she asked her chums. "Sometimes our dinners here leave much to be desired."

She walked with exaggerated undulations toward the bureau, like a model showing a new gown, removed the red and gold cover from the box and sniffed appreciatively. Having no knife, Toots took the cake in both hands and was about to break it as a boy breaks an apple when----

Clang-clang! Clang-clang! Clang-clang! Clang-clang! Clang-clang!

An insistent bell, so close to their door that it startled the three freshmen, rang loudly. Arden, Sim, and Terry moved closer together as if for protection.

"What's that?" gasped Terry. "Fire?"

"No, Brighteyes," mocked Toots. "That's the five-five-five. The bell calling us to listen, most humbly, to Tiddy's welcome-home speech. Your fruit-cake is saved, for the time being. But our time will come!"

Whereupon Toots, followed by her fellow hazers, stalked out of the room, leaving Arden, Sim, and Terry staring wonderingly after them.

"I--I think," murmured Terry, "that perhaps the bell was also meant for us."

"Yes," agreed Sim, "it probably was. Well, here's where we go in off the deep end!"

As the three freshmen hastily made ready to attend in the recreation hall, and as the black gloom of night settled down over Cedar Ridge College, out in the old apple orchard a young man in blue overalls wandered beneath the gnarled trees. He looked toward the brightly lighted windows of the recreation hall and then, with a quizzical smile on his bronzed face, while he stroked his mustache, he glanced toward the broken swimming pool and walked softly away through the rows of fruit-laden branches.

CHAPTER III Black Danger

Rather timid, diffident, and certainly not as self-confident as they had been when the sneering soph.o.m.ores had invaded their room, Arden, Terry, and Sim stood looking at one another outside the hall. Finally Arden broke the portentous silence by saying:

"Well, I suppose we had better go in."

"No help for it," voiced Sim.

"Oh, it may not be as bad as we think," consoled Terry. "It's like going in for a swim the first day of the season. The first is always the worst."

"Don't talk to me about dives and swimming!" snapped Sim. "I'm cheated, and I resent it!"

"Oh, Sim!" murmured Arden helplessly.

"I don't mean you, my dear. It's just hard times and whoever is responsible for storing vegetables in the pool that I'm sore against!"

"Well, come on!" urged Terry. "Let's get it over with."

With hearts momentarily beating faster, the three stepped into the recreation hall on their floor. It was a big room that was rapidly filling with girls, girls, and more girls.

"Just group yourselves about, young ladies. I shall not detain you very long," said Miss Tidbury Anklon, the dean, with a half smile as she stood teetering upon her toes on the platform at the end of the room. Miss Anklon was a small woman, dark of complexion, and thin. This intermittent raising of herself on her toes as she talked seemed to be an effort to make herself taller and more impressive. Her severity and keen words at times, however, made her sufficiently respected and not a little feared.

She was now trying to bring about some semblance of order in the inevitable chaos of the first a.s.sembly of new pupils.

"Quiet, please!" Miss Anklon tapped her knuckles on a convenient table.

"There are a few things I must explain to you freshmen girls on your first night in Cedar Ridge."