Ruth Fielding At College; or, The Missing Examination Papers Read online

  CHAPTER III

  EXPECTATIONS

  "I expect she'll be a haughty, stuck-up thing," declared Edith Phelps,with vigor.

  "'Just like _that_,'" drawled May MacGreggor. "We should worry about thefamous authoress of canned drama! A budding lady hack writer, I fancy."

  "Oh, dear me, no!" cried Edith. "Didn't you see 'The Heart of aSchoolgirl' she wrote? Why, it was a good photo-play, I assure you."

  "And put out by the Alectrion Film Corporation," joined in another ofthe group of girls standing upon the wide porch of Dare Hall, one of thefour large dormitories of Ardmore College.

  The college buildings were set most artistically upon the slope ofCollege Hill, each building facing sparkling Lake Remona. Save theboathouse and the bathing pavilions, Dare and Dorrance Halls at the eastside of the grounds, and Hoskin and Hemmingway Halls at the west side,were the structures nearest to the lake.

  Farther to the east an open grove intervened between the dormitories andthe meadows along the Remona River where bog hay was cut, and which weresometimes flooded in the freshet season.

  To the west the lake extended as far as the girls on the porch couldsee, a part of its sparkling surface being hidden by the green and hillybulk of Bliss Island. The shaded green lawns of the campus between Dareand Hoskin Halls were crossed by winding paths.

  A fleshy girl who was near the group but not of it, had been viewingthis lovely landscape with pleasure. Now she frankly listened to thechatter of the "inquisitors."

  "Well," Edith Phelps insisted, "this Ruth Fielding was so petted at thatbackwoods' school where she has been that I suppose there will be noliving in the same house with her."

  Edith was one of the older sophomores--quite old, indeed, to the eyes ofthe plump girl who was listening. But the latter smiled quietly,nevertheless, as she listened to the sophomore's speech.

  "We shall have to take her down a peg or two, of course. It's bad enoughto have the place littered up with a lot of freshies----"

  "Just as we littered it up last year at this time, Edie," suggested May,with a chuckle.

  "Well," Edith said, laughing, "if I don't put this Ruth Fielding, theauthoress, in her place in a hurry, it won't be because I sha'n't try."

  "Have a care, dearie," admonished one quiet girl who had not spokenbefore. "Remember the warning we had at commencement."

  "About what?" demanded two or three.

  "About that Rolff girl, you know," said the thoughtful girl.

  "Oh! I know what you mean," Edith said. "But that was a warning to thesororities."

  "To everybody," put in May.

  "At any rate," Dora Parton said, "Dr. Milroth forbade anything in theline of hazing."

  "Pooh!" said Edith. "Who mentioned hazing? That's old-fashioned. We'retoo ladylike at Ardmore, I should hope, to _haze_--my!"

  "'My heye, blokey!'" drawled May.

  "You are positively coarse, Miss MacGreggor," Dora said, severely.

  "And Edie is so awfully emphatic," laughed the Scotch girl. "But shewill have to take it out in threatenings, I fear. We can't haze thisFielding chit, and that's all there is to it."

  "Positively," said the quiet girl, "that was a terrible thing they didto Margaret Rolff. She was a nervous girl, anyway. Do you remember her,May?"

  "Of course. And I remember being jealous because she was chosen by theKappa Alpha as a candidate. Glad _I_ wasn't one if they put all theirnew members through the same rigmarole."

  "That is irreverent!" gasped Edith. "The Kappa Alpha!"

  "I see Dr. Milroth took them down all right, all right!" remarkedanother of the group. "And now none of the sororities can solicitmembers among either the sophs or the freshies."

  "And it's a shame!" cried Edith. "The sorority girls have such fun."

  "Half murdering innocents--yes," drawled May. "That Margaret Rolff wasjust about scared out of her wits, they say. They found her wanderingabout Bliss Island----"

  "Sh! We're not to talk of it," advised Edith, with a glance at the fatgirl in the background who, although taking no part in the discussion,was very much amused, especially every time Ruth Fielding's name wasbrought up.

  "Well, I don't know why we shouldn't speak of it," said Dora Parton, whowas likewise a sophomore. "The whole college knew it at the time. WhenMargaret Rolff left they discovered that the beautiful silver vase wasgone, too, from the library----"

  "Oh, hush!" exclaimed May MacGreggor, sharply.

  "Won't hush--so now!" said the other girl, smartly, making a face at theScotch lassie. "Didn't Miss Cullam go wailing all over the college aboutit?"

  "That's so," Edith agreed. "You'd have thought it was her vase that hadbeen stolen."

  "I don't believe the vase was stolen at all," May said. "It was mixed upin that initiation and lost. I know that the Kappa Alpha girls areraising a fund to pay for it."

  "Pay for it!" scoffed some one. "Why, they couldn't do that in athousand years. That was an Egyptian curio--very old and very valuable.Pay for it, indeed! Those Kappa Alphas, as well as the other sororities,are paying for their fun in another way."

  "But, anyway," said the quiet girl, "it was a terrible experience forMiss Rolff."

  "Unless she 'put it on' and got away with the loot herself," said Edith.

  "Oh, scissors! _now_ who's coarse?" demanded May MacGreggor.

  But the conversation came back to the expected Ruth Fielding. Thesegirls had all arrived at Ardmore several days in advance of the openingof the semester. Indeed, it is always advisable for freshmen,especially, to be on hand at least two days before the opening, forthere is much preparation for newcomers.

  The fleshy girl who had thus far taken no part in the conversationrecorded, save to be amused by it, had already been on the ground longenough to know her way about. But she was not yet acquainted with any ofher classmates or with the sophomores.

  If she knew Ruth Fielding, she said nothing about it when Edith Phelpsbegan to discuss the girl of the Red Mill again.

  "Miss Cullam spoke to me about this Fielding. It seems she has anacquaintance who teaches at that backwoods' school the child wentto----"

  "Briarwood a backwoods' school!" said May. "Not much!"

  "Well, it's somewhere up in New York State among the yaps," declaredEdith. "And Cullam's friend wrote her that Fielding is a wonder. Dearme! how I _do_ abominate wonders."

  "Perhaps we are maligning the girl," said Dora. "Perhaps Ruth Fieldingis quite modest."

  "What? After writing a moving picture drama? Is there anything modestabout the motion picture business in _any_ of its branches?"

  "Oh, dear me, Edie!" cried one of her listeners, "you're dreadful."

  "I presume this canned drama authoress," pursued Edith, "will haveink-stains on her fingers and her hair will be eternally flying abouther careworn features. Well! and what are _you_ laughing at?" shesuddenly and tartly demanded of the plump girl in the background.

  "At you," chuckled the stranger.

  "Am I so funny to look at?"

  "No. But you are the funniest-talking girl I ever listened to. Let melaugh, won't you?"

  Before this observation could be more particularly inquired into, someone shouted:

  "Oh, look who's here! And in style, bless us!"

  "And see the freight! Excess baggage, for a fact," May MacGreggor said,under her breath. "Who _can_ she be?"

  "The Queen of Sheba in all her glory had nothing on this lady," criedEdith with conviction.

  It was not often that any of the Ardmore girls, and especially afreshman, arrived during the opening week of the term in a privateequipage. This car that came chugging down the hill to the entrance ofDare Hall was a very fine touring automobile. The girl in the tonneau,barricaded with a huge trunk and several bags, besides a huge leatherhat-box perched beside the chauffeur, was very gaily appareled as well.

  "Goodness! look at the labels on that trunk," whispered Dora Parton."Why, that girl must have been all over Europe."

  "The trunk has, at any
rate," chuckled May.

  "Hist!" now came from the excited Edith Phelps. "See the initials, 'R.F.' What did I tell you? It is that Fielding girl!"

  "Oh, my aunt!" groaned the plump girl in the background, and sheactually had to stuff her handkerchief in her mouth to keep fromlaughing outright again.

  The car had halted and the chauffeur got down promptly, for he had toremove some of the "excess baggage" before the girl in the tonneau couldalight.

  "I guess she must think she belongs here," whispered Dora.

  "More likely she thinks she owns the whole place," snapped Edith, whohad evidently made up her mind not to like the new girl whose baggagewas marked "R. F."

  The girl got out and shook out her draperies. A close inspection wouldhave revealed the fact that, although dressed in the very height offashion (whatever _that_ may mean), the materials of which thestranger's costume were made were rather cheap.

  "This is Dare Hall, isn't it?" she asked the group of girls above her onthe porch. "I suppose there is a porter to help--er--the man with mybaggage?"

  "It is a rule of the college," said Edith, promptly, "that each girlshall carry her own baggage to her room. No male person is allowedwithin the dormitory building."

  There was a chorused, if whispered, "Oh!" from the other girls, and thenewcomer looked at Edith, suspiciously.

  "I guess you are spoofing me, aren't you?" she inquired.

  "Help! help!" murmured May MacGreggor. "That's the very latest Englishslang."

  "She's brought it direct from 'dear ol' Lunnon'," gasped one of theother sophomores.

  "Dear me!" said Edith, addressing her friends, "wouldn't it be nice tohave a 'close up' taken of that heap of luggage? It really needs acamera man and a director to make this arrival a success."

  The girl who had just come looked very much puzzled. The chauffeurseemed eager to be gone.

  "If I can't help take in the boxes, Miss, I might as well be going," hesaid to the new arrival.

  "Very well," she rejoined, stiffly, and opening her purse gave him abill. He lifted his cap, entered the car, touched the starter and in amoment the car whisked away.

  "I declare!" said May MacGreggor, "she looks just like a castaway on theshore of a desert island, with all the salvage she has been able torecover from the wreck."

  And perhaps the mysterious R. F. felt a good deal that way.