Читать книгу Gloria at Boarding School - Lilian Garis - Страница 4

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By the merest chance Gloria did not tell Trixy of the trunk incident. Not that she had any intention of keeping from her friend such an interesting possibility, but because—well, each time she thought of it something intervened, until after days and then more than a week passed, the tale seemed too stale to be revived.

Pat proved delightfully amusing, Mary Mears was mysterious and Jacquinot Corday so spectacular that the first month at Altmount went by without a dull day or even a lonely night for Gloria.

Trixy Travers was at the finishing school chiefly because Gloria Doane had inveigled her into coming. As the fashionable and popular girl at Sandford, where her father was an important manufacturer, Trixy had enjoyed good times unlimited, but as Gloria was due to attend boarding school and she reasonably decided there would be much more security from either boredom or loneliness with Trixy to lean upon.

Few letters and fewer home visits were advised by this, as by most boarding schools, during the students’ first month or two, so that those away from home for the first time might more promptly become inured to their new surroundings; so it happened Gloria had only received and written two letters from and to Jane. Now, Jane, the faithful, had for years stood sponsor for Gloria, whose mother had died when Gloria was but a tiny child. Jane kept house at Barbend, the original home of Gloria and her father, and when the young girl came into Sandford to remain with her Aunt Harriet while her father took a foreign commission from his firm, Jane Morgan went to visit her own sister, she who had so many children that the snapshot pictures frequently sent Jane were apt to be misleading in personalities. They all looked alike and seemed too many for the camera.

Mr. Doane, Gloria’s father, had returned from abroad during the previous late winter, only to enter upon a longer trip to the Philippines. His homecoming the Christmas before added the final happy chapter to Gloria’s adventure as a real estate expert, for with Mr. Doane had come the young engineer, Sherry Graves, whose venture in Echo Park proved disastrous, ruined his hopes, and all but sent him adrift in despair. Then, the natural enemy of the pretty little park, an underground river vein, was accidentally discovered by Gloria and promptly turned into a harmless course by Sherry and his friend, Ben Hardy.

The result was a boomerang credited to Gloria. These home conditions explain the dearth of letters coming or not coming to her just now, at the new boarding school.

There had been one, however, from her father, remailed at San Francisco, and also a characteristic scrawl from Tommy Whitely, her childhood friend at Barbend. Aunt Harriet had written, of course, telling of her daughter Hazel’s wonderful progress in voice culture. Hazel had spent the previous year at Altmount, while Gloria submitted meekly to a confused, if not unjust plan, of giving this preference to the “artistic cousin.”

Trixy’s letters were not quite so restricted, as she was in the finishing class. Among the most interesting was one from Sherry, who told of a “perfectly thrilling plan” for the further development of Gloria’s Echo Park.

“You’ll be rich, Glo, if Sherry keeps on. He writes of perfectly fairy like castles on your property.”

“I don’t want to be rich,” replied Gloria evenly, “but I am glad that the poor mason and his family, the one who at first lost so much in the work there, are finally made happy and comfortable. Of course it was Ben’s genius in engineering that did it all.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” drawled Trixy. “It was rather queer the genius couldn’t find that sneaky little river vein, that almost turned the pretty park on end. A mere girl, one Gloria Doane, managed that.”

The two chums were spending the evening in their connecting rooms, discussing the home news. A letter to Trixy received on the late mail added zest to the discussion.

“Really, how do you like it here, Glo?” asked Trixy. She shot her feet out in front of her with the question, and kicked over a useless little stool in the process.

“Much better than I expected,” admitted Gloria. “Pat’s always so jolly, then there’s the haughty Mary Mears and the breezy Jack Corday for variety. Who could complain with all that?”

“Isn’t Pat a lark? She just bubbles over everything and, as the boys say, gets away with it,” replied Trixy. “But Mary really seems mysterious. I haven’t been able to pry open the reserve crust. Yet, it doesn’t seem at all natural to me.”

“How about Jack?”

“The human pinwheel?”

“Pat says she is just about that.”

“How?”

“A wiz at gym.”

“Oh. Perhaps that accounts for her circus clothes.”

“That reminds me, Trixy. I have been wanting to tell you so often——”

“Whew! Sounds guilty!”

“Not quite. But I really have wanted to tell you,” floundered Gloria.

“Go ahead!”

“Then please listen.”

“All ears.”

Gloria tossed her head up defiantly. “One doesn’t peg confidences at another’s head,” she pouted.

“Now, Glo, darling,” cooed Trixy. “I does truly want to hear. Be a lamb and tell me.”

Settling anew Gloria began:

“It’s about trunks——”

“The portable, or athletic?”

“Now, Trixy!”

“But you do offer such bait for little fishes, pet, I just can’t resist. I had trunks on my mind. The basket ball squad is considering something like them to pad out for rough play. But tell me, like a pet, what about your trunks?”

Trixy was irresistible. She wore the simple uniform of Altmount, the white shirtwaist and dark blue skirt used by the older girls, and its very simplicity set off more effectively her almost faultless personality. With an arm around the pouting Gloria, and lips in close proximity to a left ear, she again cooed her request for the secret.

Gloria’s own lips lost their pout in a real surrendering smile, as she again attempted the tale.

“You see, that afternoon we came here there was so much confusion with baggage and so little time to dress——”

“And I warned you to fix up your finest.”

“Exactly. Well, I tackled, what I took for my own new, shiny, black trunk, and found it too hard to unlock——”

“You called in the Bean Pole?”

“No. I struggled and conquered.”

“Being you, you would.”

“But when the lid finally decided to come up I found the belongings within not mine.”

“Oh!” Trixy fell back a little and waited. Her exclamation was merely a polite acquiescence.

“Yes,” continued Gloria, “the top of that trunk was covered if not filled with the queerest materials——”

“Oh! Whoozy-boozy! How mysterious! No skeletons?”

“Quite the opposite. A perfect glitter of gems——”

“Gloria Doane! And you have never told me we are harboring a pirate’s daughter! Gems!”

“At least they looked like gems,” went on the imperturbable Gloria. “Of course, I was all a-flutter and couldn’t possibly inspect,” (this with an air of real importance) “but I did manage to lay hold of an envelope.”

“Glo! An envelope! With the pirate’s address!”

“Are they so careless as to leave addresses lying around loose like that? I thought they always used secret codes, made with pieces of string and rusty nails scattered in a long, long trail.”

“Of course. How stupid of me. The envelope was full of rusty spikes.”

Gloria twisted herself away with an air of finality until Trixy seized her. “Go ahead,” she implored. “Go right straight ahead. This suspense is killing me. What was the glitter and what did the envelope say about the secret?”

“You know, Trix, I really was a bit scared. You were off gallivanting, and there I was all alone, with a strange trunk full of mysteriously glittering stuff. How did I know who might rush in and accuse me.”

“Exactly! How did you know?” Trixy’s banter now toned down to real interest. “The envelope, dear, what about that?”

“I had begun to realize I was trespassing, you know, and I just glanced at the envelope. On it was written the word ‘Precious.’”

“Precious?”

“Yes. That and ‘With Care.’ But just as I attempted to put it back, I had taken it in my hands of course, just as I went to put it back, a stone fell out.”

“A gem?”

“It looked like one. A great red garnet or some sort of stone that seemed bursting with imprisoned glow.”

“How perfectly wonderful!”

“Yes, honestly, Trix, it made me creepy. I got the fire-drop back in that envelope as quickly as I could, you can believe me. It made me think of an animal’s eye, not a serpent’s eye, they’re green, but the eye of some sneaky little beast——”

“Beastie, Glo. You must call the small ones, beasties. But you are so, so graphic, you give me the shivers. Are you sure there are none of the beasties crawling around here now?”

“But I haven’t told you about the spangly things,” persisted Gloria, ignoring the frivolity. “They didn’t seem to be on gowns. I couldn’t, in the moment, make out what the article was. All I saw was glitter and sparkle.”

“What color was it?”

“Many colors, I thought; but red shone through. You see, Sam came back just as I got the trunk shut. I wouldn’t want to have been discovered snooping into another girl’s stuff,” declared Gloria.

“But whom could it have belonged to?”

“That’s an interesting question, don’t you think so? Just imagine what sort of girl would bring that here?”

“Exactly. But you watch little Trixy solve the mystery of the trunk full of gems!”

“I’m quite willing to,” agreed Gloria, with a weary little sigh.