Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School Part 25

"Certainly," replied Anne. "But let me add a word of caution. Don't allow this mark of senior caprice to turn your head. Remember you are----"

"You're worse than the others," cried Grace, "Let's change the subject."

Sat.u.r.day proved a beautiful day, and with a light heart Grace started for the links with her golf bag strapped across her shoulder. The senior whose name was Ethel Post, sat waiting for her on one of the rustic benches set under a tree at one side of the starting place. She greeted Grace cordially and the two girls set to work without delay to demonstrate their prowess as golfers. The caddies, two small boys of Oakdale, who could be hired at the links by anyone desiring their services, carried the girls'

clubs and hunted lost b.a.l.l.s with alacrity.

Miss Post found that Grace was a foeman worthy of her steel. The young girl's arm was steady, and she delivered her strokes with decision. Grace came out two holes ahead.

Miss Post was delighted. "I hope you will golf with me often, Miss Harlowe," she said cordially. "It is so seldom one finds a really good player."

"I am fond of all games and outdoor sports," replied Grace, "but I like basketball best of all. Did you attend any of our games during the winter, Miss Post?"

"No," answered the senior. "I am not much interested in basketball. I really paid no attention to it this year, and haven't attended a game since I was a freshman. Speaking of basketball," continued Miss Post, "I picked up a paper last fall with a whole lot of basketball plays written on it. It was labeled 'Soph.o.m.ore basketball signals,' and I turned it over to one of the girls in your cla.s.s. She happened to be on the team, too, and seemed very glad to get it. I presume it was hers, although she didn't say so."

At the mention of the word signals, Grace p.r.i.c.ked up her ears. As Miss Post innocently told of finding the list, Grace could hardly control herself. She wanted to get up and dance a jig on the green. She was about to learn the truth at last.

Trying to keep the excitement she felt out of her voice, Grace asked in a low tone, "Whom did you return it to, Miss Post?"

"Why, Miss Nesbit," was the answer. "I was inside the campus when I found it, and just then she pa.s.sed me on the walk. I knew she was a soph.o.m.ore, and thought it best to get rid of it, as I would probably have forgotten all about it, and it never would have been returned."

"Quite true," Grace replied, but she thought to herself that a great deal of unhappiness might have been avoided if Miss Post had only forgotten.

The talk drifted into other channels. Miss Post told Grace that she expected to sail for Europe as soon as school was over. In the fall she would return and enter Wellesley. She had crossed the ocean once before, and had done the continent. This time she intended to spend all of her time in Germany. Grace decided her new acquaintance to be a remarkably bright girl. At any other time she would have listened to her with absorbed interest, but try as she might, Grace could not focus her attention on what was being said. One thought was uppermost in her mind, that Miriam was the real culprit.

What was to be done about it? She would gain nothing by exposing Miriam to her cla.s.smates. There had been too much unpleasantness already. If there was only some way that Miriam could be brought to see the folly of her present course. Grace decided to tell Anne the news that night and ask her advice.

CHAPTER XXI

ANNE AND GRACE COMPARE NOTES

During the walk home from the links, Grace kept continually thinking, "I knew it was Miriam. She gave them to Julia." She replied rather absent-mindedly to Miss Post's comments, and left the older girl with the impression that Miss Harlowe was not as interesting as she had at first seemed.

Grace escaped from the supper table at the earliest opportunity, and seizing her hat, made for Anne's house as fast as her feet would take her.

Anne opened the door for her.

"Oh, Anne, Anne! You never can guess what I know!" cried Grace, before she was fairly inside the house.

"Of course, I can't," replied Anne, "any more than you can guess what I know."

"Why, do you know something special, too?" demanded Grace.

"I do, indeed. But tell me your news first, and then I'll tell you mine,"

said Anne, pus.h.i.+ng Grace into a chair.

"Mine's about Miriam," said Grace soberly.

"So is mine," was the reply, "and it's nothing creditable, either."

"Well," began Grace, "you know I went over to the golf links to-day with Ethel Post of the senior cla.s.s."

Anne nodded.

"We were sitting on a bench resting after the game, and the subject of basketball came up. Before I knew it, she was telling me all about finding the list of signals you lost last fall. She gave them to one of our cla.s.s, you can guess who."

"Miriam," said Anne.

"Yes, it was Miriam. I always suspected that she had more to do with it than anyone else. She gave Julia the signals, because she wanted to see me humiliated, and fastened suspicion on you to s.h.i.+eld herself. She knew that I had boasted, openly, that my team would win. When Julia gave me the statement that cleared you in the eyes of the girls, she told me that she was under promise not to tell how she obtained the signals. But I'm sure she knew that I suspected Miriam. What do you think we ought to do about it?"

Grace looked anxiously at Anne.

"I don't know, yet," Anne replied. "Now listen to my news. I have felt ever since the game that your getting locked up was not accidental. I don't know why I felt so, but I did, nevertheless. So I set to work to find out if any one else had been around there that day. I went to the janitress and asked her if she had noticed any one in the corridors before halfpast one. That was about the time that people began to come, you know.

She said she hadn't. She was down in the bas.e.m.e.nt and didn't go near the upstairs cla.s.srooms until after two o'clock. But when she did go up there she found this."

Anne held up a curious scarab pin that Grace immediately recognized. It was one that Miriam Nesbit often wore, and was extremely fond of.

"It's Miriam's," gasped Grace. "I wonder why----" She stopped. The reason Miriam had not made her loss known was plain. She was afraid to tell where and when she had lost her pin.

"I see," said Grace slowly. "It looks pretty bad, doesn't it? But why didn't the janitress take it straight to Miss Thompson? That's what she usually does with articles she finds."

"She missed seeing Miss Thompson that Sat.u.r.day," said Anne. "When I hunted her up early Monday morning, in order to question her, she asked me if I had lost a pin. She said she had just returned one to Miss Thompson, and told me where she found it. I asked her to describe the pin, and at once recognized it. Every girl in school knows that scarab of Miriam's. There is nothing like it in Oakdale.

"For a minute I didn't know what to do. Don't you remember when Miriam first had it? She showed it to Miss Thompson, and Miss Thompson spoke of how curious it was. I knew that Miss Thompson would not be apt to forget it. I hurried up to her office and found her with the pin in her hand. She had sent for Miriam, but the messenger came back with the report that Miriam wasn't in school. She laid the pin down and said, 'What is it, Anne?' So I just asked her if she would let me have the pin. Of course, she looked surprised, and asked me if I knew to whom it belonged. I told her I did. Then she looked at me very hard, and asked me to tell her exactly why I wanted it. But, of course, I couldn't tell her, so I didn't say anything. Then she said: 'Anne, I know without being told why you want this pin. I am going to give it to you, and let you settle a delicate matter in your own way. I am sure it will be the right one.'"

"Anne Pierson, you bad child!" exclaimed Grace. "To think that you've kept this to yourself ever since the game. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I wanted to think what to do about it, before telling even you," Anne replied. "Yesterday I had a long talk with David. He knows everything that Miriam has done since the beginning of the freshman year. He feels dreadfully about it all. I think you and I ought to go to her and tell her that we are willing to forget the past and be her friends."

"It would do no good," said Grace dubiously. "She would simply laugh at us. I used to have dreams about making Miriam see the evil of her ways, but I have come to the conclusion that they were dreams, and nothing more."

"Let's try, anyway," said Anne. "David says she seems sad and unhappy, and is more gentle than she has been for a long time."

"All right, we'll beard the lion in her den, the Nesbit on her soil, if you say so. But I expect to be routed with great slaughter," said Grace with a shudder. "When do we go forth on our mission of reform?"

"We'll call on her to-morrow after school," Anne replied, "and don't forget that you once made the remark that you thought Miriam had a better self. You told me the day you read Julia Crosby's statement to the girls that you wouldn't give her up."

"I suppose that I shall have to confess that I did say so," laughed Grace.

"But that was before she locked me up. She is so proud and stubborn that she will probably take the olive branch we hold out and trample upon it.

After all, it really isn't our place to hold out olive branches anyway.

She is the one who ought to eat humble pie. I feel ashamed to think I have to tell her what I know about her."

"So do I," responded Anne. "It's horrid to have to go to people and tell them about their misdeeds. I wouldn't propose going now if it weren't for David. He seems to think that she would be willing to behave if some one showed her how."

"All right," said Grace, "we'll go, but if we encounter a human tornado don't say I didn't warn you."

"That's one reason I want to go to her house," replied Anne. "If we approach her at school she is liable to turn on us and make a scene, or else walk off with her nose in the air. If we can catch her at home perhaps she will be more amenable to reason. But, if, to-morrow, she refuses to melt and be forgiven, then I wash my hands of her forever."