"I can play the kind of game you play--if I must," she said in a curiously repressed tone. "What about the trip you and Ruth Gladys made to Edentown last Friday night?"
Ada glared at her.
"Were you there? How did you know?" she stammered jerkily. "If you were up to the same trick, you"ll look nice tattle-telling on us, won"t you?"
"I wasn"t there, but I have witnesses whom I can summon to say you were," declared Betty, wishing her voice did not tremble with nervousness. "You were the only girls from Shadyside, and you must have climbed down the fire--"
Ada raised her hand that held the bottle.
"You--you tell-tale!" she screamed threateningly.
Betty flung up her arm to knock the bottle aside, missed Ada"s hand and hit her shoulder. Ada went down, Betty on top of her.
"Girls! For mercy"s sake!" Miss Anderson stood beside them, scandalized.
"Betty, get up. Ada, what are you thinking of? I saw you from the gym windows. You"ll have the whole school out here presently. Betty, I thought you had Latin at this period?"
"I have," admitted Betty, so meekly that Miss Anderson looked away lest she laugh. "Only I had to see Ada."
"I don"t know what you were quarreling about," said Miss Anderson, with characteristic frankness. "But I do know that both of you are old enough to know better than to revert to small-boy tactics. You"ve a hole in your stocking, Betty, that would do credit to a little brother."
"I ripped it on that stone," said Betty regretfully.
Ada stood sullenly, unconscious of two dead leaves hanging to her hat which completely destroyed her usual effect of studied elegance.
"Go on in, Betty," said the physical culture teacher, who labored under no delusions about the duties of a peacemaker. To tell the truth, she did not believe in forced reconciliation. "Ada will come with me."
"Ada has something I want," said Betty stubbornly. "She has to promise to give it to me first."
Ada looked at the resolute little figure facing her. Betty, she knew, was capable of doing exactly what she had said. Mrs. Eustice had no more rigid rule than the one against going to town, day or night, without permission. Ada gave in.
"I"ll leave it in your room before dinner--you didn"t think I carried it with me, did you?" she snapped.
"Both?" said Betty significantly, meaning the note and the money.
"Everything!" cried the exasperated Ada, on the verge of angry tears.
"Then you have my promise never to say a word," Betty a.s.sured her blithely.
"Do you want this bottle?" Miss Anderson called after her, as she started for the school.
Miss Anderson had been studying both girls as she waited quietly.
Now Betty turned, smiled radiantly, and took the bottle the teacher held out to her. With careful aim, worthy of Bob"s training, she fixed her eye on a handy rock, hurled the bottle with all her strength, and had the satisfaction of seeing it dashed into a thousand fragments as it struck the target squarely.
Then she trotted sedately on to her delayed recitation, and Miss Anderson and the scowling Ada followed more slowly.
Just before dinner that night there came a knock on Betty"s door, and Virgie Smith, one of Ada"s friends, thrust a package at Bobby, who had answered the tap.
Betty managed to turn aside her chum"s curiosity and to get away to Libbie and give her the note. They burned it in the flame of a candle, and counted the money. It was all there, folded just as Libbie had placed it in the bottle. Evidently Ada had never carried it.
Libbie paid Louise the money she had borrowed of her and gave Betty the amount she owed her, most of which was Bob"s.
"Now do try to be more sensible, Libbie," pleaded Betty, turning to go back to Bobby. "When you want to do something romantic think twice and count a hundred."
"I will!" promised Libbie fervently. "I"ll never be so silly again, Betty."
But dear me, she was, a hundred times! But in a different way each time.
Libbie would be Libbie to the end of the chapter.
Betty, rushing back to brush her hair for dinner, heard a sound suspiciously like a sob as she pa.s.sed Norma Guerin"s door. It was unlatched, and as no one answered when she tapped Betty gently pushed it open and stepped into the room.
Norma lay on her bed crying as though her heart would break, and Alice, looking very forlorn and solemn, was holding a letter in her hand.
CHAPTER XX
THE SECOND DEGREE
"My patience, what a world of trouble this is!" sighed Betty to herself, but aloud she said cheerily: "What"s the matter with Norma?"
Norma sat up, mopping her eyes.
"Oh, Betty," she choked, "I don"t believe Alice and I can come back after Christmas! They"ve had a fire in Glenside and a house dad owns there burned. He hasn"t a cent of insurance, and the mortgagee takes the ground. So that"s the rental right out of our income. Besides, grandma has had an operation on her eyes and she has to spend weeks in an expensive Philadelphia hospital. Even with the small fees the surgeons charge because of dad, the board will amount to more than he can afford to pay. Alice and I ought to be learning stenography or something useful."
"Well, now, your father would say," suggested Betty, with determined optimism, "that the Christmas vacation is too far off to make any plans about what you"re going to do afterward. You know Bobby Littell has set her heart on you and Alice spending the recess with them in Washington.
Anyway, lots of things can turn up before Christmas, Norma--even the treasure!"
Norma tried to smile.
"I dream about that chasm nearly every night," she said. "Sometimes I think the Indians came back and got the stuff, Betty. They"re so clever about climbing, and I know they wouldn"t easily give up."
"Nonsense!" chided Betty. "The treasure is there, and we"ve just got to think up a way to get it out. At all costs you mustn"t cry yourself sick about the future--you"ll spoil all the fun awaiting you in the weeks before Christmas. And you know you can"t study as well when you"re depressed, and, goodness knows! one has to study at Shadyside."
"I"ve a headache now," confessed Norma, pushing her tumbled hair out of her eyes. "I can"t go down to dinner--I"m a perfect sight. There"s the bell!"
"Just lie down and try to rest," advised Betty, smoothing the tangled covers with a deft hand. "I"ll bring you up some supper on a tray. Aunt Nancy thinks you"re an angel on general principles, and she has a special soft spot in her heart for you because her mother used to cook for your grandmother. Come on, Alice, we"ll turn the light out and let her rest her eyes."
"I do wish some one would think up a way to get those pearls and the gold," fretted Betty, turning restlessly on her pillow that night. "If Norma and Alice are ever going to be well-off now is the time. When they"re so old they can"t walk, money won"t do "em any good!"
Which showed that Betty, for all her sound sense, was still a little girl. Very old ladies, who can not walk, certainly need money to make them comfortable and keep them so.
The next night was Friday, and Betty welcomed the prospect of the second degree necessary to stamp the freshmen as full-fledged members of the Mysterious For. The week had been noticeably tinged with indigo for at least two of Betty"s friends, and she hoped the initiation might take their minds from their troubles.
The second degree, it was whispered about among the girls, was bound to be a "hummer."