Jane Allen, Junior Part 32

"Of course," dimpled Jane. "Here, children, please take these things. I will be held responsible for them and there's no telling who might take a notion to cover her couch with that lovely silk scarf."

They gathered up the precious trophies, flags and scarfs. Then the lights were out at last.

CHAPTER XXV

THE DAY AFTER THE BIG NIGHT.

The flush of success invaded old Wellington. As a whole the place seemed suffused with a pardonable pride, and as individuals each girl seemed justly proud of the small part she played in making up that grand total. Even the big city papers sent out reporters to get a "good story" of the mid-year dance, and more than one scribe waylaid the popular girls, pleading for pictures.

Judith Stearns, as sub-editor of the Blare, the college paper, had a part in giving out this general publicity, and what a joy it was to describe the gowns of Jane, Bobbie, Doze and lists of others!

Jane was busy dismantling the dance room--the big a.s.sembly room in Warburton--and no cla.s.ses were to be called for any work during the morning, so that conditions and students might just slide back into orderliness and thence to the serious work of finis.h.i.+ng the last semester.

Party dresses were packed away by reluctant hands, boxes tied up and labelled hopefully for the next dance, while heads that had been curled for the big occasion bore testimony to the skill of many willing fingers (not a few of the fingers bearing blisters to still further testify to such achievements), and altogether the atmosphere was distinctly and decidedly that of the small day after the big night before.

Sally was ruefully tieing up her finery in rather compressed packages and Bobbie was begging her not to spoil the stuff outright.

"Don't act so suicidal, Kitten. Be brave today for tomorrow we fly!"

she misquoted.

"I can't see how you can joke about it," whimpered Sally, bruising her fingers with a jerk at too strong a piece of bundle cord.

"Really, Bobbie, if I ever dreamed it would be as hard as this to go, I don't believe anything would have induced me to come." She bit her bruised finger as well as her trembling lip.

"You don't mean that, Kitten," drawled the indifferent Bobbie, who had agreed to help pack, although she much preferred "firing things in trunks" and utilizing packing time out of doors. "You would never have known the fun we have had here, if you hadn't come, and isn't it heaps better to pay now than never to have known it?"

"Nothing seems better now--everything is worse, coal black, pitch dark, bitter, worse," snapped the usually complaisant Sally.

"If I had your talent, wild horses couldn't drag me from Wellington," said Bobbie seriously. "And I do hope, little Kitten, that I am not wholly to blame for your unhappy predicament," her voice dropped to seriousness.

"Now, Bobbie," and the good-natured little Sally smiled through, "never forget that you really made it possible for me to come here, and that you--"

"Now, that's enough, Kitten. If you start going back we shall find ourselves in each other's arms with awfully red eyes--first thing you know. I still think the miracle will save you, but poor me!" and she affected a most juvenile boohoo. "I am surely doomed."

"Why don't you try it, Bobbie? You might get through--"

"Not in a thousand years. And suppose I did, where would it land me?"

"In your proper place, in cla.s.s, of course."

"And have every one know--I couldn't, Kitten. I talk bravely, but I'm a rank coward at heart. There, the boxes are tied, I hope to your satisfaction, and it's sweet of you to do the tags. No one would be able to read the addresses if I wrote them. Oh, me, oh, my!

somehow today reminds me of old Polly Jenkins' funeral. Her abandoned bedroom looked just about like this," surveying the disorder of the little room under the eaves.

"Well, you run along and attend to the outside errands; I must hide the evidences of our flight," said Sally, with something between a laugh and a sigh. "You may pay all my bills, just say we want to settle things so we can run off home when the holiday is proclaimed, then, if you don't mind, just hand this music to Dolly Lloyd."

"Couldn't I kiss a few of the girls for you so as to save time later?" asked Bobbie in naive sarcasm. "I am so sentimental today I could hug the very old trees, I do believe. All right, little sister, I'll go out and do the financial ch.o.r.es, but my head and my heart are still at the dance," and she hummed herself out with a feeble dance step--to do the aforesaid ch.o.r.es.

Left alone the blonde little freshman dropped her hands in her lap and ceased her nervous activity.

"Really going!" she kept thinking, "and I thought the half year would be endless in its days and hours!" A newly painted calendar- sample just finished by Nellie Saunders and offered as a model for Christmas gifts--focused the girl's attention. How dainty, yet how rugged the deft bit of water color! Trees and landscape all melting into that big flourish "W" for Wellington! It seemed like that; everything attractive just now was blended into the college opportunities, and Sally was about to turn her back on them, for what?

The housemaid tapped at her door and announced a caller. Hurriedly gathering up trifles to put the room in a semblance of order, she hurried down to the reception room, there to confront Dolorez Vincez!

"Oh, good morning," said Sally, trying to cover her surprise.

"Bobbie has just gone out."

"I met her," replied the visitor, without returning the salutation.

"But I would like a few words with you--if we could be alone."

Sally glanced about at the open doors and continually flapping draperies: whatever Dol Vin had to say could certainly not be said in that public room. A coat tree at the door held Sally's tam and Mackinaw. She got into these and suggested a walk outside.

There was no denying it, Dol Vin was a striking looking girl, and even her flashy clothes could not altogether disguise her rather handsome foreign type. Today she wore a big black velvet tam jabbed rakishly on her black head, a flame colored coat that b.u.t.toned around her tight as a toboggan ulster, and only the deep olive tint of her face in any way withheld the eye from a criticism of "too much color." Today Dol's cheeks were not tinted, and the way her deep set black eyes flashed, further told how angry she was, and how reckless.

Scarcely had the girls from Lenox gone far enough to be out of hearing than she started in on helpless little Sally.

"What are you two thinking of?" she demanded angrily. "Do you think you can kick out and leave me without warning? Don't you know how short I am--"

"Miss Vincez," interrupted Sally, "I don't see what possible claim you have on either of us. The fact is we both feel you have very much overworked your alleged claim as it is."

"Oh, you do!" and she gripped Sally's arm viciously. "Well, I'll just tell you, sissy, I fixed it so you both could get in here."

(Sally pried her arm loose and kept at a safe distance.) "I helped you along, played all your tricks--"

"Stop, please," demanded Sally indignantly. "You know perfectly well it was against any wish of ours that you brought that crazy creature in here to frighten the girls sick in the name of sport, hazing,"

declared Sally, her voice rising at each word. "And then, you turned the same foolish creature loose to frighten all the other children who might hear her wild voice. How can you dare say to me that such a trick was ever countenanced by us?"

"Oh, my, really!" sneered the foreigner. "How we have grown! Please don't bite me with your sharp tongue. As you say, yes, I did turn her loose, and do you know that now she has been sent away? Put in a hospital! Bah! It is in an asylum for the crazy" (Dol was very foreign now), "where the state, this great big powerful state, shall take all that poor harmless woman's money! Could I not allow her to live a little when she paid me? But they will kill her and get paid for the murder! That's the way they treat the poor crazy folks in their big stone prisons!" she alleged angrily.

"She has been declared insane?"

"Declared insane!" she mocked. "You call it that? Yes, I call it kidnapped, and poor old Zola was so harmless if they would but let her scream and play at acting."

Sally was dumbfounded. The woman who had played ghost was really a lunatic, and this unprincipled adventuress had dared allow her to get into a place like Lenox, and to go about the countryside without restraint! Sally felt almost sick at the thought, and having walked the full length of the hedge-rows she attempted to end the unpleasant interview.

"If you will excuse me--" she began feebly.

"But I shall not," almost shouted the angry South American. "I know what this place can do! I know how your spiteful Jane Allen and her chums got me out--"

"Stop!" cried Sally sharply. "Jane Allen is my friend, and I will not hear her spoken of in that manner."

"Your friend!" and she sneered like some animal snorting. "She may make of you a cat's paw to play at her feet, but she shall never be your friend. If she just knows what you are--"

But Sally turned and deliberately fled from her persecutor. She could no longer stand the tirade, and nothing that she seemed able to do or say had any softening effect upon the angry young woman.

Suppose she did meet some of the girls and attempt to tell what she knew of Sally's secret? Would anyone stand by and listen? Was not this expelled pupil actually trespa.s.sing even to be upon Wellington grounds?

It was getting close to the noon hour and studies were to be resumed after the luncheon period. Students who had taken advantage of the morning recess to be out at some favorite sports were now returning in flocks, and Sally quickened her steps to reach Lenox before the rush of late comers. She turned just once to see if Dolorez was going through the grounds to leave at the opposite gate, but the blazing red coat was not in sight.